How to Keep Microsoft Teams Green (Available)

How Teams decides your presence

Teams shows a presence such as Available, Busy, Do not disturb, Be right back, Away or Offline. Most of the time it is set for you from your activity and calendar: meetings make you Busy, calls make you In a call, and inactivity, a locked screen or sleep make you Away. Our guide to Teams status icons shows what each one looks like.

Microsoft’s Teams troubleshooting guide says your status changes to Away when the desktop is inactive for more than five minutes. Locking the computer or letting it sleep does the same straight away, and on mobile Teams goes Away once the app is in the background.

Presence is combined across your sessions. Microsoft Graph documentation explains that a preferred presence you choose overrides the automatic one, and that among sessions, states such as Do not disturb and Busy outrank Available. A phone or second computer can therefore change what colleagues see.

Does Teams stay green when your computer is asleep?

No. When your computer sleeps or locks, the Teams desktop app stops reporting activity and you soon show as Away; on a phone, Teams goes Away once the app is in the background.

A schedule that runs from a server works differently: OnlineHours sets your presence from its servers during your hours, so the result does not depend on your laptop being awake. Meetings, calls and a status you set yourself still take priority.

Built-in settings worth checking

Set your status by hand and choose a duration. Teams lets you give any status except Available a duration, so it can hold Busy or Do not disturb through a known stretch, such as a workshop, but it cannot keep you green while you step away, and it needs to be redone every time.

Check meetings and focus time in your calendar. Blocks marked as busy or focus can override Available, which may be exactly what you want.

Check your other devices. Sign out of old browser sessions and look at what the phone app is doing during your test.

Workarounds and their limits

Keeping Teams open with the computer kept awake works only while the machine is on and unlocked. Power settings, VPN drops and closing the lid end it.

Mouse jigglers simulate input so the computer never looks idle. They need the computer running and affect every app on it, and some organizations restrict them. See our mouse jiggler guide for the trade-offs.

Calls and fake meetings change your presence to something other than Available and can confuse colleagues looking at your calendar. They are not a routine.

Keep Teams Available on a schedule with OnlineHours

For Teams in your browser at teams.live.com, the recommended way is the Teams Connector, a free Chrome extension: no Microsoft consent screen and no admin approval. You create a private code in the connector and paste it into Apps → Teams. The session behind the code expires, and the dashboard asks you to reconnect with a fresh code when it does.

Work and school accounts use the second option, Microsoft sign-in. You approve the Presence.ReadWrite permission, which lets OnlineHours set your presence; it does not give access to chats, files or calendar content. Some organizations require an administrator to approve the app first; our admin-approval guide explains what to send them.

Choose your hours and switch the schedule on. OnlineHours sets your presence from its own servers during those hours, so your laptop can be closed. Outside your hours it stops and Teams goes back to its normal rules.

The same schedule options apply as for Slack and ClickUp: up to six time blocks, explicit time zone, Go online for a while, Always on and Stop.

If Teams still shows Away or Busy

Check from a colleague’s view, not only your own client. Then check which other sessions are active: a phone, a browser tab or a second laptop can contribute a different state.

Remember the order Teams applies: a status you set yourself, then Do not disturb and Busy, then Available. If you are in a meeting, Teams is right to show Busy.

If the dashboard asks you to reconnect, create a fresh code with the Teams Connector. With Microsoft sign-in, sign in again or ask your administrator whether the app approval has changed.

Use it honestly

Scheduled presence works best for hours you have agreed with your team: flexible schedules, focused work away from the keyboard, field work or time-zone overlap. Follow your organization’s policy on presence tools.

OnlineHours only changes presence. It does not read Teams messages, files or meetings.