Teams erratically flips user status from 'Available' to 'Away' after just minutes of inactivity: "It’s not a status indicator, it’s a surveillance tool with trust issues."

Microsoft Teams supports real-time collaboration and communication with its messaging and video conferencing features for meetings, file and app sharing, and more. Microsoft usually does a great job at keeping the platform up-to-date with sophisticated features designed to make communication seamless.

However, it's hard to ignore the users lodging complaints about the app's presence feature. For context, it's designed to let other people in your organization know your availability: Available, Busy, In a meeting, In a call, Do not disturb, Be right back, Away, and Offline.

Over the past few days, users have complained about how Teams' presence works, with some claiming that the status indicator will change from green to yellow after barely a few minutes of inactivity. Green means you're available for work, while yellow means you're away.

As a result, you need to go back and forth to the platform to avoid instances where it mistakenly marks your availability at your workplace as Away. Otherwise, a more permanent Out of Office status can automatically be set if you enable automatic replies: "If the user is using Teams during these periods of time, the user's presence is shown alongside the Out of Office indicator," Microsoft added.

Technically, this shouldn't be a big deal as long as you're still working. These kinds of collaboration tools are often susceptible to downtimes anyway, which can impact productivity significantly.

This opens up another discussion about an overreliance by organizations on collaboration tools, but that's a story for another day.

A quick look at the r/remotework subreddit on Reddit reveals that some bosses have seemingly turned into the Teams Status Police, constantly checking employees' availability.

My boss is obsessed with Teams status instead of actual work from r/remotework

"Microsoft Teams is the worst way to track someone! It changes your status to Away after just 5 minutes of no mouse movement, even if you are deep in work," another user lamented. "This hurts focus for millions of remote workers every day."

"Look away from your laptop for 1 second and MS Teams will say u left the country," another user joked.

"Teams sees you step away for water and immediately files a missing persons report," the jokes keep writing themselves. "Two minutes is insane… like sorry I blinked, and suddenly I’m “away”?" another user complained. "At that point, it’s not a status indicator, it’s a surveillance tool with trust issues."

I've reached out to Microsoft for a comment about the topic, and I'll update this post once more information is available. Elsewhere, Teams was on the spot again, specifically about its "Automatic Update of work location" feature, which was misconstrued as a micromanagement and employee surveillance tool.

However, Microsoft dismissed the claims, revealing that the tool is designed to foster collaboration. "Work location is an extension of the online-presence signal in Microsoft Teams and of the working hours control in the Microsoft 365 calendar," Microsoft clarified. "By bringing together working hours, work location, and online presence, users can more easily find out where their coworkers are working from in addition to whether they're available to connect."

More recently, Salesforce and Slack filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the company of anticompetitive practices over bundling Teams with its Office suite.

Have you had a similar experience with Teams' status indicator? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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