ultimately, I want to use the 'keypad' from the unified toolbox.
I would have a faceplate with 3 input fields, that when touched would open a popup faceplate 'keypad', and upon closing the keypad write the value into the field.

This is/was relatively easy to do in AB, Bosch and non-unified siemens.

I want to use the 'keypad' as there is no sense opening a full onscreen keyboard for fields that do not accept letters in them.

has anyone figured out how to get this to work?

I thought i had it working outside of the faceplate, ie, just an IO field, and a button that would call the keypad, and a script that would notice the change in value and write it in the field.
I started to add it to my faceplate, and then the non-faceplate version stopped working.
so i'm back at square one.

Any advice for this would be greatly appreciated.

Hey there Murof,
Just seeing today that you replied.

The toolbox I got from siemens can be found at:

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/de/de/view/109770480

First, I had to fix the 'real' keyboard, as it would not put the value into the field.
The 'keys' add values to a string, the the Keyboard tag was set to a real so it just didn't work from the start.  The INT keypad worked fine and is how i figured to fix the real one.

BUT, when i tried to connect the keypad to a iofield inside a faceplate, i could not get the value input to show up in the faceplate tag. 

I could get the keypad to open, it just wouldnt write the value into the field.