Teams away setting automatically switching on when not away

I am having the exact same problem.  I'm actively working on my computer and after 5 minutes of not clicking on Teams it changes my status to "away".  I've already been accused  by my boss of not working.  This is a HUGE problem when so many of us are working remotely and our bosses are using Teams to determine if we are actually working.  It also impacts communication with my colleagues, as they are waiting for me to be "available" to chat or call me.  I have better things to do than to stop working and click on "available" every 5 minutes.

This needs to be fix immediately!

My teams is up to date. It does this erratically. After 5 minutes some days after 30 minutes other days. 

It doesn't make any sense for it to be doing this at all, we should be able to manually set out status and choose whether it reverts itself to away. A real fix would be appreciated.

Having the same issue. Not a good thing when your boss likes to check on his reports Teams status and sees you’re “away” when you’re really not.

Hi there, 

My teams status is constantly switching to "away" while I am working on my computer. This is very frustrating as my co-workers need to know when I am actually away or available.

Is there a manual override for this? It would be excellent to be able to set it as available so that my team knows they can reach my even if I am working on paper, or in this case if it has switched itself to "away".

Thanks!

This has been reported under many different threads. I was just writing in another thread "MS Teams keeps on switching to 'Away' even though I am still online" today. I later received an email from MS saying they would close that thread and sent me a link to another thread "MS Teams changing constantly to "away" status" which claims MS fixed this issue in 11/2021. Of course most people on that thread said otherwise. Funny this second thread is also closed today. We are getting the run-around and don't seem to get any help or get MS to fix Teams.
My status turn to "Away" while I am watching it on my desktop after 5:30 to 6:00. I timed it. This started earlier this year. My wife was just telling the same this afternoon but hers started > 1 year ago. My boss just wrote me a few days me about work but prefaced by saying You are probably away....". I happened to have gone to the bathroom for a minute and my status happened to switch to "Away" when she pings me during that minute. I said I was there and her response was "I understand!" You think she believed me? No. This is bad for people's jobs.

Seven,

While the work-around would technically work, I'm not sure why this should even be necessary.

One of the plus sides of Teams before this update WAS that it was very easy to stay connected with coworkers and for them to know when each other was available. It is unrealistic, impractical and unproductive to expect everyone to be actively working in Teams 100% of the day (or at least every 5 minutes).

I can understand the argument that this "enhancement" would allow users to focus on other work on their computer and not be distracted by an onslaught of Teams messages, but now our phones are just beeping with Teams notifications since Teams is "idle", defeating the purpose.

As a service based company, many times a quick interruption can save another coworker spinning their wheels for hours trying to solve a problem. Now we assume each other is away from their computer and spend more time composing an email or more thorough Teams message, or digging for answers ourselves instead of quickly reaching out as a result.

Organizations should be able to decide whether they want the "idle" status to kick in for their users if Teams is inactive OR the computer is inactive/locked after a period of time.

Leona