Teams away setting automatically switching on when not away

Hi Kathleen,

I have consulted our engineers further about your problem. If we don't work on Teams although Teams is running in the background and we work on our computer, the status will be changed to Away after five minutes automatically. 

Given your situation, there is a workaround you can have a try. You can set a status message and show the message when someone message you so that your co-workers know you are available at that time. To do that, please click on your profile picture and select Set status message, then type any status message like "I'm available." in and check the Show when people message me option. You can also set the time when the message can be cleared. After setting it, click Done to save the changes. Then your co-worker will be able to see your status message when they message you or @mention you.

Hope this can help you and welcome back to share your feedback with me.

Regards,

Seven

WHAT KIND OF ANSWER IS THIS. HAS TO BE A JOKE

Hi Kathleen,

I have consulted our engineers further about your problem. If we don't work on Teams although Teams is running in the background and we work on our computer, the status will be changed to Away after five minutes automatically. 

Given your situation, there is a workaround you can have a try. You can set a status message and show the message when someone message you so that your co-workers know you are available at that time. To do that, please click on your profile picture and select Set status message, then type any status message like "I'm available." in and check the Show when people message me option. You can also set the time when the message can be cleared. After setting it, click Done to save the changes. Then your co-worker will be able to see your status message when they message you or @mention you.

Hope this can help you and welcome back to share your feedback with me.

Regards,

Seven

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having statuses at all if someone has to set it up manually to contradict what Teams shows automatically?

On my remote team, our manager uses this in conjunction with Outlook calendar to know if we're available at a glance. I'd rather it just say Im available during certain hours unless I tell it otherwise. It could sync to Outlook and know our workday as well as commitments so the user only has to set things once and forget it.

What an MS answer, here we are millions of users with the same problem and we are told to manually go through 4 steps every time we want to change our status - total lack of business acumen and agility. I am so disappointed.

I have this problem with the Web Version of Teams and it is annoying.  It shows me being "away", even though I am right here working in other windows/programs.  People then start to think you are not actually here.  I can't install the thick client either, because it wont connect to my corporate account due to VPN.  

In my case, I use my home PC with Citrix and I also RDP into my work laptop, which has a thick client installed.  

I should be able to set the away timer OR it should detect if I am here, without needing me to have the window open, even in the browser. 

This is broken functionality designed to track employees obviously and hurting everybody who logs in with the Web Browser view.

Your solution is to change this functionality on the web browser versions.

Same problem different day. No matter what I do it always switches back to 'Away'. I work on multiple programs, screens and it always the same day in and day out. Everyone I know is having this issue. Thanks "Teams" on being a "Team" player!