Bug - User statuses incorrectly changing to "Busy" and "In a Meeting"

[Christine Harbour]

I use Microsoft Teams to communicate with my work team. We have noticed that our status is constantly changing to some form of busy ("In a Meeting") and when we change it back to "Available", the status will just change back to "Busy" sometime later. My work day is about 8 hours long and I've had to change my status back to "Available" about 3 times today, so it is fairly frequent. Another team member is stuck in "Out of Office" status and we keep getting notifications when we try to message him. Every time we update our status back to "Available", it will just revert to the original "Busy" state.

Is anyone else experiencing a problem where your Teams status gets changed to Busy, without any action on your part? I know my status automatically updates to "Away" based on whether or not my computer is sleeping / turned on, but I have never seen my status automatically change to "Busy" unprecedented like this.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

It's because the presence updates to Teams. It's using your calendar similar to Skype for Business did and marking you Busy when entering a meeting with "Show as:" set to Busy which is usually a Meeting.

Out of Office is set 2 ways.
1. Automatic Replies in Outlook which will include a message when hovering over someone's avatar inside of Teams and set their status to OOF.
2. Meeting inside your calendar set to "Show as:" Out of Office will set your status to Out of Office only with no message if you have this on your calendar.

What mostly happens with the Out of Office is because for whatever reason people like to send Out of Office calendar invites to each other and this will be on your calendar and set your status due to that. Those vacation invites you need to mark as free when you accept them if you do. I decline them cause it's a bad habit of others that I wish never got started :P.

Anyway, that should explain what your experiencing.

[#3]

Christine, also pointed out another user that had this issue as well that wasn't calendar related, but determined it's most likley due to heavy Citrix xenapp usage. Basically if you use remote sessions etc. in the background your status will change to busy as well not just from meetings so if it's not meetings you have marked busy on your calendar then I would check to see if your using any kind of remote desktop / screen sharing style applications running those will trigger the status as well.

[#4]

Great.  So how do we disable it?

[#5]

Hello,

I like this update but already have clients complaining. Will there be a way to turn it off for Teams?

[#6]

This makes sense now! We use a 3rd party system for day to day activities that syncs with our Outlook calendar. The calendar in that system is for tickets or tasks that go on our calendar in that system, which then syncs to Outlook. Those items are going over to Outlook as a Busy status, and therefore, updating our teams status accordingly. We don't have an option to set free or busy status in the ticketing system when we add things to our calendar there. Looks like I need to make a request to my ticketing system to allow for setting status so that outlook reflects correctly. Thanks for the insight!

[#7]

If they can do that look at using tentative. That will still block your calendar off from meeting invites but not change your status in Teams.

[#8]

I figured out a way to set my status as Tentative in my API. I also changed my calendar items to Free in Outlook, but my status was still showing busy? I'll see how the day progresses. Maybe it just needed some time to update and sync.

[#9]

Yeah that checks your calendar on like every 30 minutes or hour, haven't quite sat down and tried to figure all that Out, but it's definatley not real time :)

[#10]

I just noticed this glitch today so it is still a problem.  My Outlook calendar has no activity at this time, yet my MS Teams status shows me as Busy. I'm not logged into any other shared network.

Please notify us when this bug gets solved.

[#11]

I've checked I have no calendar appointments set to 'In a Call' -- just one All Day event set to 'Free' and still my status keeps switching to 'In a call'. There are no other comms apps running. I've reset my status to 'Available' 5-6 times in the past 3 hours. Thus far it has stayed set to 'Available' for around 5-10 minutes after each reset. [edit: updated for clarity]

[Update: It fixed itself after a further 2-3 hours.]

[#12]

Usually this happens when you have some form of RDP session open or software that uses a form of remote control. Seen it numerous times. Got anything like that? Citrix , remote into another machine etc?

[#13]

Thanks for replying.

I've checked in task manager and there's nothing obvious -- except Skype though the main processes for that are showing as suspended.

I've informed people in our organization via chat that there's a problem with my status, we'll have to see if it clears up over time.

[#14]

I'm having these same problem. I can reset my status to Available, and in a few minutes it puts me back in Busy.

This just started in the last day or two as far as I know.

[#15]

Similar issue here but status is stuck as "On a Call".  It happens after I receive a Teams call.  Work around for now seems to be putting your status as Away for 5+ minutes then switching it to Available.

[#16]

Yes, I'm seeing that in our organization too. Not sure if it directly as a result of being on a call but I suspect so knowing how at least two of my fellow members uses Teams (calling overseas). They've been on DND for days. 

[#17]

What would be really nice is an option to un-sync your Teams status with Outlook Calendar events & Teams events -- personally I don't want my Teams status to sync up with all of my calendar events, I'd rather just update my status manually if I truly am "Busy" or "Out of Office".

[#18]

I was aware of that (as an avid Skype user) as much but there seems to still be a small bug with it.

After your post, I went to my teammates profile in Teams who was still in "BUSY" on Teams, with the red icon showing.

I checked his Outlook profile and it said "Free for next 8 hours".

Went back to his profile in Teams and moused over the red status icon and it instantly went from red to green.

So it's just not updating automatically, at least for me.

Shouldn't have to mouse over everyone's status in Teams, but I'll remember to do this meanwhile.