What Is Teams Presence?
Presence is the small coloured dot on your profile picture. It's Teams' real-time read on whether you're reachable, and it drives everything from how teammates decide to message you to whether notifications get held back. Unlike a status message (the free text like "Out for lunch"), presence is a defined set of states with set colours and rules.
It matters because people act on it. A green dot invites a quick message; a red one tells them to wait. When your presence is wrong — green when you're gone, or Away when you're heads-down working — it quietly misleads everyone you work with.
Every Teams Presence Status
Some statuses are set automatically by Teams; others you set yourself. Here's the full list:
| Status | Set by | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Available | Auto / manual | Green. Active in Teams and reachable. |
| Busy | Auto / manual | Red. Focused or occupied but still reachable. |
| In a meeting | Auto (calendar) | A Busy state set by a scheduled or live Teams meeting. |
| On a call / In a call | Auto | A Busy state set during a Teams call. |
| Do not disturb | Manual | Red. Mutes notifications; only priority contacts break through. |
| Be right back | Manual | Yellow. A short, deliberate step away. |
| Away | Auto / manual | Yellow. No recent activity in the Teams window. |
| Appear offline | Manual | Shows you as Offline while you keep using Teams. |
| Offline | Auto | Grey. Not signed in on any device. |
How Teams Presence Is Calculated
Three inputs feed your automatic presence:
- App activity — keyboard and mouse input inside the Teams window keeps you Available. Teams watches its own window, not your whole computer, so working in another app doesn't count.
- Your calendar — a scheduled Teams meeting puts you in "In a meeting" (a Busy state) for its duration.
- Call state — being on a Teams call sets "On a call." Calls in other apps like Zoom or Meet are invisible to Teams and don't change your presence at all.
A manual status sits on top of these. If you set yourself to Available or Do not disturb, that overrides the automatic read until it expires or you reset it — but the automatic detection keeps running underneath.
The 5-Minute Away Timer
The single most-asked question about Teams presence: how long until it shows you Away? The answer is about 5 minutes of no input in the Teams window. That's aggressive — Slack waits around 30 minutes — and it's why Teams users see Away so often.
Crucially, this timer is fixed. Older versions of Teams had a setting to adjust the away timeout; Microsoft removed it. Any guide telling you to change "show me Away after X minutes" is referencing a setting that no longer exists. Reading a doc, sitting on an external call, or thinking with Teams in the background all trigger it.
Web vs Desktop Presence
The statuses are identical across the desktop app, web, and mobile — but how presence is detected differs:
- Desktop app reads OS-level signals, including when your computer locks or sleeps — so locking your screen can send you Away.
- Web app depends on the browser tab. Backgrounding the tab or closing it changes when you go Away.
- Multiple devices — if you're signed in on more than one, Teams reports the most active presence across them.
Keeping Your Presence Green
If your presence keeps going Away when you're actually working, you have a few options. Keeping Teams in the foreground works while you're at your desk. Mouse jigglers help only if the movement lands on the Teams window. For consistent green through calls, deep work, and breaks — without babysitting the app — Stay Green On Teams holds your Available status from our servers on the schedule you set, even with the laptop closed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Microsoft Teams presence calculated?
Teams presence is a mix of automatic and manual signals. Automatically, it's based on your activity in the Teams app, your calendar (meetings set you to "In a meeting"/Busy), and call state. You stay Available while Teams sees recent input in its own window; after about 5 minutes of no input it switches to Away. You can also set a status manually, which sits on top of the automatic one.
What are all the Microsoft Teams presence statuses?
The main statuses are Available (green), Busy, In a meeting, On a call, In a call, Do not disturb, Be right back, Away, Appear offline, and Offline. Available, Busy and Do not disturb can be set manually; Away, In a meeting and On a call are usually set automatically by Teams.
How long before Teams shows me as Away?
About 5 minutes. After roughly 5 minutes with no keyboard or mouse activity in the Teams window, Teams switches you from Available to Away. This timer is fixed — Microsoft removed the setting that once let you change it — so it can't be lengthened in settings.
Does Teams presence work the same on web and desktop?
The statuses are the same, but how they're detected differs. The desktop app reads OS-level activity and your computer's lock state, so it can show you Away when your machine locks. The web app relies on the browser tab, so backgrounding or closing the tab affects when you go Away. Across multiple devices, Teams reports the most "active" presence.