The coloured dot next to your name in Teams feels like a judgment, but it's produced by a short list of mechanical rules.
The signals behind presence
- Input. After several minutes with no keyboard or mouse activity, Teams moves you from Available to Away. The exact delay is typically around five minutes.
- Lock and sleep. Locking the PC or letting it sleep tends to set you to Away right away.
- Calendar and calls. A meeting or call can set Busy or In a call regardless of input.
- Manual status. If you set a status yourself, it can override the automatic one for a while.
What this means in practice
If you read a long document, listen on a call from your phone, or wait on a render, you can look away while doing real work. Teams can't tell the difference between thinking and being gone, because the only thing it sees is activity.
What you can do
Setting your own status is the most direct lever and the most honest one. If you use Teams in the browser, an extension that simulates page activity can keep the activity-based timer from running out while the tab is open. It won't change calendar-driven or manually set statuses, it doesn't affect the separate Teams desktop client, and it can't stop an IT-enforced lock.
Whichever you choose, tell your team how you work. A short note about when you're heads-down or on a long job does more for how you're perceived than any dot.