Presence status in Microsoft Teams

If you want to make sure people know when you’re busy or away from your desk, set your status in Teams. The little dot on your profile indicates if you’re available or not.

Teams will automatically set the status in many cases like when you’re in a meeting or out of the office and have automatic replies turned on.

To explicitly set it yourself, go to your profile at the top of Teams, and select one from the list.

The user presence states available in Teams are:

Automatic presence statuses are based on your activity (Available, Away), Outlook calendar states (In a meeting), or Teams app states (In a call, Presenting), to states that are indented in the list. There's a 15-minute inactivity timeout, after which a current presence state is reset to Away.

You will receive all chat messages sent in Teams regardless of your present state. If you are offline when someone sends you a message, the chat message appears in Teams the next time you are online. If you set your status to Do Not Disturb state, you will still get chat messages but a banner notification won't be displayed.

You will receive calls in all presence states except for Do Not Disturb states, in which incoming calls are delivered to their voicemail.

What status should I choose and when?

Available is when you’re active in Teams and don’t have anything in your calendar. FYI—If you've been idle for 15 minutes or more, Teams will automatically change your status from Available to Away.

Busy is when you want to focus on something, and you do want notifications to pop up.  If you’re in a meeting or call, Teams will automatically change your status to In a meeting or In a call (Busy) when not set to Do not disturb.

Do not disturb is when you want to focus or present your screen and don’t want notifications to pop up.

Be right back is when you want to say you’re temporarily away. It’s never set automatically.

Appear away is when you need to work without responding right away.