Statuses and Out of Office Options (Teams)

If you want to make sure people know when you’re busy or away from your desk, set your status in Teams. The little dot on your profile indicates if you’re available or not.

Teams will automatically set the status in some cases, like when you’re in a call. To explicitly set it yourself, go to your profile at the top of Teams and select one from the list.

Here’s more detail about each kind of status that you change:

• Available is when you’re active in Teams and don’t have anything in your calendar (no meetings or calls, for example). Note that Teams will automatically set your status from Available to Away when you lock your computer or when it enters idle or sleep mode. On mobile, this will happen when the Teams app is in the background.
• Busy is when you want to focus on something, and you do want notifications to pop up.  If you’re in a meeting or call, Teams will automatically change your status to In a meeting or In a call (Busy) when not set to Do not disturb.
• Do not disturb is when you want to focus or present your screen and don’t want notifications to pop up.
• Be right back is when you want to say you’re temporarily away. It’s never set automatically.
• Appear away is when you need to work without responding right away.
• Appear offline is when you want to indicate that you're not signed in to Teams, so will not be responding until you're back online. You'll still receive notifications if anyone messages you.

Schedule Out of Office status in Teams

Set up an out of office status and message to let your teammates know you're not working or on vacation. When teammates send you a chat message, they'll see your out of office reply and know you're unavailable. Your out of office status will also sync with automatic replies in your Outlook calendar.

There are two ways to schedule your out of office status and message in Teams.

Schedule an out of office from your profile picture

• Go to your profile picture at the top of Teams and select Set status message. 

• Select Schedule out of office at the bottom of the options.

• From the screen that appears, turn on the toggle next to Turn on automatic replies. 
• Type an out of office message in the text box. This message will appear when people contact you in Teams or open your profile. It'll also be sent as an automatic reply in Outlook. 

Note: An out of office message is required in order to set your status and sync with your Outlook calendar.

• If you'd like to send an automatic message to people outside of your organization, select the check box next to Send replies outside my organization and choose between your contacts or all external senders. You can tailor your out of office message to this audience, or use the same message you typed above by copying/pasting it into the text box.
• Based on when you'll be out of the office, pick the dates and times that your out of office message and status will start and stop displaying by selecting the check box next to Send replies only during a time period. 
• Select the Save button.