Global status durations on Teams

Question

Global status durations on Teams

Kennedy Sarah 0

Hello, is it possible to set the Available status duration globally in Teams across your organization? The specificity of the work is such that often the user does not move the mouse for a long time and does not use the keyboard, which changes the status to unavailable. Even though the employee is at the desk, other employees do not have this knowledge and do not write messages.

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Answer 1

Hello @Kennedy Sarah

I want to make sure I address your concern correctly.

As I understand it, you would like to know whether there is a way to configure Microsoft Teams globally across the organization so that users remain in "Available" status for a longer period of time, especially in situations where employees are working but may not be actively using their keyboard or mouse.

Currently, Microsoft Teams does not provide an administrator setting or policy that allows organizations to globally extend the "Available" status duration, keep users permanently in an "Available" state, or modify the inactivity timing across the organization. Instead, Teams determines presence automatically based on factors such as user activity, the state of the Teams application, and device status. For example, when a desktop device remains inactive for several minutes, the status may automatically change to "Away".

For your reference: Change your status in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support

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As a practical alternative, you may wish to consider the following approach. While it is not exactly the same as extending the "Available" status duration, it may help colleagues understand that an employee is actively working even when the presence indicator changes.

Add a Status Message in Teams

This helps colleagues understand the employee's current working situation even if the presence indicator changes.

Select your profile picture in the top right corner of Teams.
Choose "Set status message".
Enter a message such as "Working on monitoring/review tasks. Please contact me if needed.

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Finally, as this may be a requirement that many other users and organizations have as well. If you would like Microsoft to consider this capability, you can share your idea through the Microsoft Feedback Portal, where the Microsoft product team reviews customer suggestions for future updates

Feedback Portal

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Answer 2

No. Teams does not support setting Available with a duration, and presence is not controlled globally in a way that prevents users from becoming Away when they are inactive.

Supported behavior:

Users can set a duration for any status except Available.
On a computer, Teams presence changes to Away automatically after inactivity or when the computer is locked.
Presence is based on user activity, the Teams app state, and Outlook calendar state.
Users can manually choose only statuses that are less available than the automatically calculated status, not a more available one.

What can be done instead:

Use another manual status such as Busy or Do not disturb with a duration if that fits the scenario.
In Teams for Web, enable Settings > Notifications and Activity > Presence > Keep my current status when I'm active outside of Teams on the web. This helps prevent status from switching to Away while the user is active in other browser tabs or apps.
Use a status message to tell coworkers the person is working but may not be actively using keyboard or mouse input.
Review device sleep/idle settings, because those affect when Teams changes from Available to Away.

Important limitation:

A user who is sitting at the desk but not providing input for several minutes can still be shown as Away on desktop because Teams uses inactivity and device state for presence.