People working from home and using MS Teams - status changes to 'Away' very quickly...

Participant · 4 Sep 2020 at 12:55

I found it annoying that recent Teams updates result in it changing my status to away very quickly (after ten minutes at a guess) when I'm at my desk but on the phone, or staring at a PowerPoint slide, which is a lot. This means that people won't message me and may think I'm not working.

It seems that if you log into your Office 365 account in a browser (I'm using Edge to keep Chrome for non work) and make sure you have a PowerPoint presentation open in full screen presentation mode on your work laptop to prevent it locking, you can then set your status as you wish in the browser and it will maintain this status, rather than it changing itself to away in about the amount of time it takes to make a brew and have a poo.

Quite niche I grant you, as it relies on you a) working from home b) caring enough c) using and being able to log into Teams online with your corporate account d) having a separate corporate laptop, etc.

Obviously not to be used for pretending that you're working when you're not, to hoodwink your line manager

.

Participant · 4 Sep 2020 at 13:20

Diddums said:
I strongly suspect that any manager using that dot to gauge whether you're being productive or not is an idiot or a crap manager.

Yes, having a crap manager is one obvious use case for this.

Participant · 4 Sep 2020 at 14:34

Arsonist said:
I still message people when their status is 'Offline'. If I don't get a response in 30 mins that's a written warning.

Lol f'real?

People should just have the Teams app on their phone if they're AWOL, then they can simply message you back on that :cool:

.

Diddums said:
Wow, what a lovely person you must be to work for. Personally I'd ask for justification as to why it's offline first. You know, like someone who actually has an interest in their staff.

Are you Mike Ashley by any chance?

That's a little naive to assume the process is his choice! He's presumably got to fall in line if he wants to put food on the table.

Or he is a 'bad boss'.

Participant · 4 Sep 2020 at 14:37

m@rty said:
You poor man, did you have some type of accident?

If he's touching them that often maybe the other one fell off.

Participant · 4 Sep 2020 at 19:21

Pho said:
Use something like Caffeine to nudge your PC automatically to avoid going into away mode

https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/

Most company computers won't allow that.

Participant · 6 Sep 2020 at 08:47

Daaaavvveee said:
another method is just open media player and put a standard computer noise on repeat.

That's a good one.

touch said:
Can't you just right-click on the taskbar icon and choose My Status > Available ?

It doesn't work setting it manually. The latest version will revert to showing you as away after a short amount of time.

Participant · 9 Sep 2020 at 17:17

Right the media player one didn't work, but I've found what might be the simplest and most reliable workaround so far.

Create a PowerPoint slide and animate some text to wobble or something on a endless loop (i.e. until next click) using animations.

Put it in slide show mode and it'll keep your work computer alive, so Teams will retain whatever status you set manually.

Seems to work flawlessly so far.

Participant · 9 Sep 2020 at 21:39

Yadda said:
Please say you've given up on the idea of piloting passenger 'planes.

Lol.

I think the fact that I'm going to these lengths tells me I've got the desire to do something else with my life.

Whether that something is propelling 100 tonnes of aluminium through the air at 300 knots is a question.

Liking the paperclip (traditional methods are best) and macro ideas.

Participant · 10 Sep 2020 at 10:44

Participant said:
Lol.

I think the fact that I'm going to these lengths tells me I've got the desire to do something else with my life.

Whether that something is propelling 100 tonnes of aluminium through the air at 300 knots is a question.

Liking the paperclip (traditional methods are best) and macro ideas.

Well the animated PPT slide didn't work, I couldn't figure out the paper clip method, and the macro was beyond me.

I now have something heavy sitting on my Q key and Notepad open. I think that's cracked it.

Participant · 10 Sep 2020 at 15:28

lurkio said:
I use an exe created by autohotkey , it presses a key every 2 minutes ... and just repeats forever

How are people running all these random exes on corporate machines

Participant · 10 Sep 2020 at 17:22

My solution:

...with Notepad in focus.

This time it definitely works. Now I can nip out to the shops, or do some exercise, or whatever without anyone thinking that they're unable to contact me because I'm away. This means I can do more work and be more productive, hurrah!

Participant · 10 Sep 2020 at 19:19

Looks like a powered nipple clamp.

Participant · 10 Sep 2020 at 22:13

Mushy Peas said:
I could just use something from my girlfriend's bedside drawer then?

Or your mum's

Participant · 11 Sep 2020 at 06:31

Scam said:
For all the people tricking Teams into thinking you're actually there.. clearly no one ever contacts you otherwise you'd be rumbled quite quickly

That's not the case. Two points:

1. If your status is busy, it's not unreasonable to ignore contact as you are after all...busy. Anyone who gets the hump that you're not replying immediately when your status is busy, can carry on thinking their request is more pressing than whatever I'm doing and see how far it gets them!

2. I could be on my phone using the teams app but away from my laptop; as soon as my laptop detects inactivity, I'm no longer busy apparently, even if I'm sending messages and making calls whilst at the park, out for a walk, etc.