Forum Discussion

HBod's avatar
HBod
Occasional Reader
Jan 26, 2026

Status during a Teams call : "in a call" only once others have joined!

Hi,

I work remotely so most of my job is through Teams calls with laypeople (i.e. not necessarily Teams savvy). 

I like to start the calls a few minutes before to prepare my shared whiteboard, etc., make sure sound is OK...

However, the status, even when I'm alone, is automatically "in a call" and so I don't have notifications anymore, which is generally OK, except that if my client tries to call me on the phone (which is on Teams), they go directly to voicemail. It is annoying to manually switch it.

 

I think that when we are ALONE in the call, waiting for others to join, we should appear as AVAILABLE so that all notifications, etc. are still enabled until we are not alone in the meeting... and then, yes, all the do not disturb aspects must kick in!

 

Thanks!

meetings

1 Reply

  • Nivedipa-MSFT's avatar
    Nivedipa-MSFT
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Jan 26, 2026

    Hello @HBod,
    Unfortunately, this is by design and there's currently no built-in setting to keep your status as "Available" when you're alone in a meeting. Microsoft treats joining a meeting as an intentional "busy" signal regardless of participant count.

    To ensure your idea is considered for future updates, we recommend submitting it through the Teams Feedback Portal. Feature requests are reviewed by the engineering team and may be prioritized based on various factors, including the number of requests received. 

    If you have any additional thoughts or feedback, please feel free to share them with us. Your contributions are valuable and help improve the product! 

    Thank you again for your valuable suggestion! 

Resources