Microsoft Teams lets you communicate with your coworkers and show them whether you’re free or busy by showing your activity status. However, if your workplace demands constant availability, you need to prevent your status from changing to “Away.” Luckily, there are ways to address this situation.
Why Your Team Status Automatically Changes
Microsoft Teams marks you as “Available” until it detects inactivity or your device enters sleep mode. At that point, it switches your status to “Away.” Additionally, if you haven’t used Teams for five minutes, or it’s running in the background, your status will also turn to “Away.”
Microsoft Teams changes your status based on your activity and calendar events. If you’re in a meeting or call, Teams will set your status to “In a meeting” or “On a call” by default unless you’re in Do Not Disturb mode. The Do Not Disturb status lets you focus or present your screen without receiving any notifications.
If you want to indicate that you’re temporarily away, you can manually set your status to “Be Right Back.” Teams won’t set this status automatically; it’s up to you to choose it.
Unfortunately, there’s no direct way to maintain your status as “Available” when your computer enters idle mode, or you are away from the PC for more than five minutes. However, there are methods to prevent this, whether you’re using Windows or Mac.
Set Your Team Status to Available
The first and easiest step you can take is to adjust your user presence in Microsoft Teams. If your status isn’t set to “Available,” you’ll need to get active on the Teams screen. After that, you can manually assign your status to “Available” through the user presence options.
To modify your Team status, click on your profile picture within the Team’s interface. Then, select your current status and select “Available” from the drop-down menu.
Even if you’ve manually set your status to “Available,” it doesn’t guarantee that it won’t automatically switch to “Away.”
For example, if you lock your system or your PC goes into sleep mode, your status will again change to “Away” mode. To resolve this issue, you can set a custom status message that will never turn off until you change it.
Prevent Your PC From Going to Sleep
If you’re someone who uses Microsoft Teams all the time on your PC for work, then, you may take a temporary break while working to grab a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, if someone checks your Team’s status during this time, they will see it set to “Away” because your PC has gone idle. To prevent this from happening and avoid any potential embarrassment, you can extend the time before your PC enters sleep mode.
To modify the power and sleep settings, simply open Windows settings and click on the “System” section. After that, select the “Screen and Sleep” option under the Power settings. Here, you can adjust the sleep time, after which your PC goes into idle mode.
If you’re on a Mac, head over to the system “Preferences” and navigate to the “Battery” option. Next, choose the “Power Adapter” option and adjust the “Turn Display Off After” slider.
After increasing the sleep time, you can now set your status to “Available” to prevent Microsoft Teams from showing you as away.
Stay Active on Teams on Your Phone
Being active on the Microsoft Team mobile application is another way to be active and set your status to “Available.” If you become active on the phone and not on the PC, your team status will remain “Available.”
However, one thing you need to make sure is that the Microsoft Team application should not run in the background on your smartphone. If your phone screen closes, or you switch to another application, your status will change to “Away.”
Being active on the Team’s mobile app is a great alternative to letting your colleagues know that you are available, especially if you cannot sit in front of your PC all the time.
Furthermore, you can adjust the screen timeout settings to prevent your phone from going idle. Just like the Windows method mentioned earlier, this will ensure that your phone stays on and active, allowing the Microsoft Teams app to remain active too.
Play a Background Music Video or a Slide
Another option to keep Microsoft Teams available all the time is to run a video in the background on your PC. To begin, set your status to “Available” in Microsoft Teams. Then, go to YouTube or any media player and play a long video. Since the screen stays on while the video is playing, your status will remain “Available.”
You can also open a slide on PowerPoint and present it to you on full screen. After that, switch to another application using the Alt+Tab shortcut. This will keep the PowerPoint running in the background, making Teams think you’re still active on your PC.
Start a Meeting With Yourself
Starting a meeting with yourself and changing its “In a Call” status to “Available” can also prevent Teams from showing you away. While the meeting is happening, your status won’t switch to “Away,” even if Microsoft Teams is minimized.
This is a great way to be active on Teams instead of being away after every five minutes. However, make sure to change the meeting status to “Available” status, otherwise being in a meeting for a long period may seem strange.
Download Third-Party Application
Third-party apps such as Caffeine or Amphetamine can also be used to stop Microsoft Teams from automatically changing your status. These apps, when running in the background, will press a specific key or move your mouse after a specific time. This will help your PC to be active on teams and doesn’t switch to “Away” mode.
For example, when you install Caffeine, you’ll see a tiny icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen. To use it, just click its icon. You can choose how long you want it to keep your computer awake. You can also disable it if you no longer need it or if you are active on Teams.
Additionally, if you’re a Mac user, you can try Amphetamine, similar to caffeine.
Use a USB Mouse Jiggler
You can also move your mouse regularly to avoid the “Away” status. It can be done manually by moving the mouse, or you can use an app like Mouse Jiggler or MoveMouse to automatically move your mouse and stay available.
This is particularly useful when you need to step away from your computer for a while but want your status to remain active. These apps prevent your computer from going into idle mode, allowing you to receive notifications and messages from Teams as long as your computer is awake and active.
Split Screen
You can use the split screen feature to stay active on Microsoft Teams while working on other apps. For example, you can move the Teams window to one side of your display and open another app or browser on the opposite side.
With the split screen feature, you can multitask your work along with “Available” status on Microsoft Teams.
Why Not Set the Status to Busy?
Instead of relying solely on the “Available” status indicator, it’s better to communicate your availability directly to your fellow team members. If you need to focus on a task without interruption, you can simply set the status to “Busy” or “Do Not Disturb” mode. You can also just leave a customs status message to indicate that you’re working on something urgent and that you’ll get back to them as soon as possible.
