How do I stop Teams from showing users as "busy" all of the time?

Question

I'm an IT Admin at a company of about 100 users that utilize Microsoft Teams and other Office apps to do business. We just recently switched from an on-prem Exchange server to O365 mail in the cloud. This change has allowed the Teams calendar to sync with our Outlook calendars, which works awesome except for one thing: it totally screws with our Teams status. Now, every event on my calendar (Teams or not) marks me as "busy" and doesn't allow any calls to come through until that calendar event is over.

Is there a way to turn this feature off so that my status on Teams DOESN'T sync with my Outlook calendar?

Answer 1

This option doesn't appear to be available in the current version of Teams.

Answer 2

I found a fix. Open your calendar in outlook and change your appointments to "Show as Free". Then you won't automatically appear busy during appointments you're not actually on a call for.

Answer 3

Hey!

Thanks for the reply. When I go to that section on my Teams app, I don't see that option listed anywhere.

Do you know if it is located anywhere else? Maybe in the Teams Admin Center?

Answer 4

Even worse, the "busy" status does not automatically clear itself. So once I hit my first meeting of the day, I'm marked as Busy until I manually clear it. Rinse and repeat for every single call.

Answer 5

Any update on how to do this with the current Teams version?