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Throughout the day I will happen to notice that my status has somehow flipped from available to busy/in meeting. I have no idea how/when it's happening, but I definitely do not want it to do this. I imagine Teams is trying to figure out from my activity if I'm available or not, but it's getting it very wrong. How can I make it stop with this auto flipping and lock it down to manual?

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    Not posting this as an "answer" even though it is the direct answer: You don't. You do not have control over your status in TEAMS as you would with Skype, and it's not configurable. After 5 minutes idle, TEAMS sets you as "away". "In a meeting" is based on your Outlook calendar. etc. and you can't lock it down to manual only, nor change how much time it takes to switch to "away". OTOH in theory you can use the manual setting of status and it should override whatever TEAMS has set automatically, at least until the next Outlook calendar entry.
    – Debra
    Commented Jan 9, 2019 at 22:46
  • One workaround I use is to force it to be Away all the time. This way it's not overridden (if I set Busy however, it switch automatically to Away after 5 min).
    – рüффп
    Commented Oct 21, 2020 at 8:09
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    Also, if Cortana Daily Briefings is on, you'll get further updates of your Teams status from that - such as Focusing, Resting, etc, which I think is embarrassing, as you don't want your bosses to know your "resting". I hope MS fix this to allow us to control our status manually.
    – Fandango68
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 0:34
  • Don't have enough reputation to answer, but I've created a small Python script that "jiggles" Teams to prevent it from setting away mode. Can be viewed on github.com/Simbiat/Teams-Jiggler
    – Simbiat
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 5:18

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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I assume that you are using Outlook 365. I believe it is the case that your Teams presence status is tied to your Outlook calendar events. Whenever you have a meeting where you've marked yourself as 'busy' or 'out of office' for that calendar event, it will reflect on your Teams status as well. To answer your question, going forward, you will have to mark your calendar events as 'free' instead of the default 'busy', unless of course you are actually busy.

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You can keep your status to show available even if your not at your computer by setting your mouse on top of an analog clock or watch that has a second hand. The movement of the second hand makes the computer think you are moving and the status will remain active.

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    What OS is this?
    – jsibs
    Commented Feb 17, 2021 at 20:28
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    He's talking about a physical watch.
    – ggb667
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 18:25
  • This is amazing! Here are few other tricks youtube.com/watch?v=Bt83gnlv0XE and youtube.com/shorts/DlqidQer3Yg and plenty more on YouTube.
    – igor
    Commented Feb 24, 2023 at 9:21
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    Archaic method. I've heard of software that moves your mouse pointer a little bit, too.
    – user486359
    Commented Apr 25, 2023 at 8:26
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As Teams changes status according to Outlook calendar, I just schedule 'appointments' and set it to show as Free / Out of Office, with reminders disabled. It mass pollutes the calendar a bit, but at least get the Teams status to behave like you want as a workaround.

I do this, especially in current pandemic and working from home, to let co-workers know when I am on or not, and not to message me just because my work phone triggers a Teams status that I am available when I am really not, prompting some late workers or out of continent folks to poke for stuff. :P

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Teams automatically sets your status based on your Outlook calendar and when it detects you as idle. Manually setting your status appears to override this behavior with whatever status you select, and choosing "Reset status" appears to revert the behavior back to the default.

Aside from manually setting the status, neither of these features can be disabled or customized, though the Microsoft Teams UserVoice site has user requests for both features:

Calendar status

Through some manual experimentation, it appears the following are status changes that occur:

Outlook Calendar Status Teams Status
Meeting In a meeting
Appointment (Busy or Out of Office) Busy
Appointment (Free or Tentative) Available
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