Keep Microsoft Teams status Available instead of away using PowerShell

It is one of the things I hear my colleagues, and even my girlfriend, mention regularly… Why does Microsoft Teams think I’m away while I’m not / My PC isn’t locked yet… I read a few solutions, setting your status duration to a date in the future, etc… Didn’t work 🙁 What does work is running my simple PowerShell scripts, which I will show you in this blog post 🙂

Disclaimer

This PowerShell script is a straightforward way to keep your Microsoft Teams status set to Available while watching work-related content on your machine (Training, internal video from work, etc. ), getting some coffee when working at home, or whatever action keeps you from moving your mouse or typing. I didn’t create this to make your boss think you’re working hard at home while you are watching NetFlix series 😀 It’s just something I found funny to write, not a serious project… (Busy week)

How does the script work?

You run the script, which will remain active until you press CTRL-C or close the PowerShell window. It checks if Microsoft Teams is running (The new version, of course) and will press the Num-Lock key twice (To toggle it back to on or off, leaving it like you have it configured). It will wait 60 seconds, press Num-Lock again, wait for 60 seconds, and so on. If Microsoft Teams is not running at that moment, or if you close it for an update, it will wait 15 seconds to see if it’s running again and continue the 60-second Num-Lock loop.

If you want to change the keys being pressed to something else, use this table to use other characters. Using Num-Lock seems to work fine, but it could trigger something while watching media (NetFlix will show the title of the item you’re watching, for example).

You can also change the frequency of 60 seconds to any value you like, but to keep Microsoft Teams awake, it must be below 300 seconds because Teams will think you’re away after 5 minutes. (Change the Write-Hosts prompt too 🙂 )

Running the script

You can save the script’s contents to, for example, c:\scripts\Stop-MicrosoftTeamsAway.ps1 and run it in your PowerShell session. The output will look like this when Microsoft Teams is Active:

When Teams is not running, it will look like this and return to the output as shown above when Teams is active again:

Wrapping up

This is how you keep Microsoft Teams in an Available status 🙂 Run it from your PowerShell prompt when needed, or schedule it on your system using Scheduled Tasks. (Configure it to run as your user to make it work. Admin rights are needed, or at least the “Log on as a batch-job” permission.)

The script

Save the script’s contents below to, for example, c:\scripts\Stop-MicrosoftTeamsAway.ps1.

while ($true) {
    try {
        Get-Process -Name 'ms-teams' -ErrorAction stop | Out-Null
        Write-Host ("{0} - Microsoft Teams is running..." -f $(get-date)) -ForegroundColor Green
        $wshell = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell
        $wshell.sendkeys("{NUMLOCK}{NUMLOCK}")
        Write-Host ("{0} - Pressed NUMLOCK twice and waiting for 60 seconds" -f $(get-date)) -ForegroundColor Green
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 60          
    }
    catch {
        Write-Warning ("{0} - Microsoft Teams is not running, sleeping for 15 seconds..." -f $(get-date))
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 15
    }
}

Download the script(s) from GitHub here.