For the 9600 series and J100 Series on H.323, the Contacts button is a personal contacts directory where you can add your own, similar to your mobile phone.
You can add something like 250 entries, depending on the firmware (Avaya kept increasing for a while). To add a contact, press the CONTACTS button and then the NEW soft-key (as labeled on the display).
Welcome to the year 2000 and texting on a flip-phone using the letters on the keypad.
What you may want is the CM station directory that lets a station see every name programmed as a station. You'll want to program buttons for the features Directory, Next, and Make-Call. I'm assuming your stations are programmed "Last Name, First Name".
[ol]
[li]Press the Directory key.[/li]
[li]Enter the user’s last name by using the number pad.[/li]
[li]Press the Next key to scroll through possible matches.[/li]
[li]When the correct user is displayed, press the Make Call key to dial.[/li]
[/ol]
For example, if you want to dial "Smith, John" then you press Directory and start entering the numbers that correspond with the name S=7, M=6, I=4, T=8, H=4. You can then use Next to scroll through all the Smiths to find John.