Using Sysex from a button and other sysex CSS questions

Hi All
Before I reinvent the wheel, Im using the Aturia Minilab mkii.
Its brilliant but out of the box its very limited for ableton…
So

1. The option buttons on mkii eg SHIFT do not send cc but rather Sysex; has anyone else dealt with this previously? I want to use the shift as a temporal shift button for mode (I have a change request for Arturia firmware to remove the program recall from the shift and make it shift+pads9-16 button instead, freeing up shift for more important functions)…

2. The pads do not respond to cc either and instead are mapped via sysex also; same question, has anyone managed stuff like this in CSS previously etc

3. Any advice on making buttons sticky? eg
A quick click/release on shift should stick the mode on (sticky)
A long hold (and subsequent buttons) should return immediately to the previous mode of operation as soon as the shift is released which requires a round trip from ableton to turn the sysex shift back off again

Cheers