What this does

Lets colleagues see your availability at a glance — Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Away, any custom status your admin has added, or your own written status message — synced across Desktop, Mobile, and Web wherever you’re signed in.

What you’ll need

  • Communicator open and signed in.

Steps

  1. Click the status icon at the bottom-right of your avatar (or the tray icon) to open the status menu.
  2. Choose Available, Busy, Do not disturb, Away, any status your admin has added (e.g. “Lunch Break”), or Custom status to write your own message.
  3. For a custom status, pick the underlying state it counts as (e.g. Busy) and type a short message describing why — colleagues see both the state and your message.
  4. Set an expiration so it doesn’t stick after it’s no longer true — options range from 1 hour up to several days, This week, or Always. Once it expires, your status reverts to Available automatically.

Presence integration settings

The status menu also has a Presence integration settings option, covering two separate integrations:

  • Busylight — if you have a compatible physical presence-light device, this maps each status to a light colour: Available (green), Busy (red), Away (yellow), Do Not Disturb (purple), Logged out (grey), and red for On a Call, Incoming Call, and In Meeting. Colours are customisable per status.
  • Outlook calendar presence (Windows only) — automatically sets your Communicator status based on your Outlook calendar appointments, though you can still override it manually at any time. You can also set a custom presence description, visible to your contacts, that shows automatically whenever you have an ongoing Outlook appointment.

What you should see

Colleagues see your status icon change on your avatar, and your custom message (if set) in the tooltip when they hover over you. Setting Do Not Disturb also silences chat notifications, conference join alerts, and “colleague came online” notifications until you change it.

Troubleshooting

  • You forgot to change your status back after lunch/a meeting. Set an expiration when you set the status in the first place — it reverts to Available on its own, so there’s nothing to remember.
  • You’re not getting notifications even though Preferences > Alerts look fine. Check your status isn’t set to Do Not Disturb (or a custom status built on it) — DND overrides your Alert preferences while it’s active.
  • Communicator shows you as Away even though you’re at your desk. Check Set away from Desktop when inactive for under the status menu — it triggers automatically after a period of no activity on your computer, adjustable from the same menu.
  • Your Microsoft Teams status doesn’t seem to reach Communicator. Confirm Teams presence sync is actually configured for your system — and note it only flows one way, Teams to Communicator, not back the other way.

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