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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!
Additional features, settings, or issues not covered by specific Microsoft Teams categories
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yes, we have to use caffeine ! thats the only work around so that machine is not idle.
Caffeine isn't an option for employees of companies which care at all about security, because end users are not allowed to install software on their computers without the software being pre-approved and offered up via controlled channels.
Caffeine isn't useful. The problem here is that it shows you away when Team isn't focused. Caffeine can't "ping" into a specific window, to fix this **** issue.
ie- The main complaints from everybody above is that they are NOT away, they are working at their desks, but Teams shows them "away" if the Teams Window isn't in focus.
I use Citrix, Remote Desktop, etc. Guess what happens after 30 seconds of doing work in any citrix app, my RDP, Microsoft Word, Excell, etc? I am shown as "away". I program switches and routers most of the day, and do a lot of project coordination, obviously Teams isn't in focus for me, even with a dual monitor setup.
Ironically enough, if I take a coffee break or go for lunch, I will use Caffeine to ping the desktop and keep me from going away, when I am actually away.
This is a **** design on Microsofts part. They think its keeping people "accountable", but it isn't. Delinquent employees can easily work around this with Caffeine or a mouse moving macro or whatever and take the entire day off it they wanted. Legit Employees get screwed because Chrome and Edge wont detect if somebody is active.
Teams for Desktop obviously wont work for many people because of corporate firewalls, or I would easily use it.
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I kind of found a workaround that seems to working for me but I had to switch to the teams web app.
Open the DevTools (Chrome) and switch to the Network tab. There you can see alk the network requests Teams does.
Now select the request "https://presence.teams.microsoft.com/v1/me/reportmyactivity/", right-click on it and select block url.
Minimize DevTools window (keep it open).
Done.
I know it is ugly :)
Another solution would be to use something like pi-hole.net and block the url there. This should work for the Desktop version too but it can be more difficult to setup for some people (or even imposible depending on your environment).