How to Change Teams Presence or Status

This article will go over how to change your presence in Teams (Available, Busy, Away, etc.) and what processes could be automatically affecting it.

This article will go over how to change your presence in Teams (Available, Busy, Away, etc.) and what processes could be automatically affecting it.

Microsoft Teams, Outlook Calendar

There are a few things that will automatically affect your Presence as seen in Teams or Outlook.

• If there is an appointment on your Outlook Calendar, your Presence will show as "Busy"
• If you are in a Teams meeting, your Presence will show as "Busy"
• If you step away from the device logged into Teams, your Presence will show as "Away" (Only after the mouse and keyboard are untouched for a certain amount of time)
• If you manually change your Presence (using the steps below), that will override any automatic settings for a set amount of time, but those manual settings will expire and reset your Presence to follow your calendar and/or activity (see link below for expirations)
• More details found here

To manually change your Presence, follow these steps below:  (These work in Teams on a PC or a Mac.)

1. Open Teams
2. Click on your user photo or initial in the top right corner
3. Just below your JMU email, it will show your current presence. Click this line.
4. Select the appropriate status.  
   • To set your Presence for a specific amount of time, first click on Duration, and then choose the appropriate status and time-frame.
5. To reset your Presence to follow your Outlook Calendar once again, come back to this setting in Teams and choose Reset Status. 
6. Your Presence will reflect in Outlook whenever someone types in your email address to send you a message.

For additional questions you can contact the IT Help Desk at 540-568-3555 or at helpdesk@jmu.edu.