I did some testing with this, and the built-in Generic Z-Wave Contact Sensor driver is capable of parsing these events. If that's not happening, the parameter didn't get set. Looking at the documentation from above and the Basic Z-Wave Tool itself, you'll likely need to put this value in the UI as -1 rather than 255 (signed vs. unsigned integer value), and you should see log entries from the Tool on success but could manually run a Get on this parameter just to make sure if you want.
Or use the custom driver. 
But I tried this with mine since I know it used to work for me and wanted to make sure that was still the case.
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Thanks! Looks like it configured the parameter. But I don't think it is reporting either contact yet. The light isn't lighting up either not that it has to but on the hubitat generic one it did. It wasn't lighting up before this update either.
Also it looks like it thinks the contact is closed.
Not sure if this part helps in the documentation for the device
Also the status attribute of contact is not available.
There are no contact events in that last log you posted, only tamper. There has to be an event for the attribute to populate.
Not sure if you had debug enabled or not, but with debug enabled any ignored events would have been logged as debug.
Possibly when the external contact option is enabled the normal contact sensor stops reporting?
Do you have this same device? OP seems to have issues with it reporting the events not sure why. Lots of the logs posted I only see tamper events. Seems like changing that setting breaks it.
Yes, I have the 15270.
If the OP is only trying the external sensor, I think there is something weird with this device, like the internal sensor needs to be closed in order for the external one to report events. Or at least I'm imaging that's why I (poorly) soldered something across mine to make it stay that way. If the external one is all they're trying and they're not seeing events, I'd try that first.
EDIT: and by "that," I mean closing the "internal" contact with the magnet like normal while testing, not soldering -- unless you end up needing to go that route.
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Thank you everyone for your help. This was very informative and will help me in future testing with drivers.
From all my testing after the setting is set to 255/-1 the sensor will not alert for contact on either the primary or the secondary. It won't alert if the primary contact is closed and the secondary is triggered or the other way around. I removed/excluded added go back to the Generic z-wave contact driver and the sensor doesn't alert for contact until after I change the setting back to 0.
It appears that the documentation is wrong or there is another setting that needs to be changed to get this to work.
Probably the quickest way to fix this is to add the external to the magnet sensor by physically soldering it to the same terminals.
I added some hot glue to keep it from breaking off. Now both sensors work though I only needed the external.
Did you verify that the parameter was actually set to the correct value? This can be tricky with battery-powered devices since they need to be awake when it happened. As I mentioned above, I have this same model (I even opened up mine again right now to check, and all the markings except what appears to be the date code are the same on mine), and it works after setting this parameter and keeping the internal contact closed.
But -- it sounds like you have another solution, so that works, too!
Yes he used the driver as modified which sets it automatically at wake up and confirms it. It’s in one of the logs above.
