r/LifeProTips • u/ThatThingTheDarkSoul • 15h ago
Productivity LPT: Keep your Teams status “Online” while AFK
If you want Microsoft Teams to keep showing you as Online while you're away from your computer, there’s a simple trick:
- Create a new meeting with only yourself in it.
- Join the meeting. Your status will change to Busy.
- Manually change your status back to Online.
- Leave the meeting running.
As long as you remain in the meeting, Teams will keep displaying you as Online, even if you're not touching your computer.
Other people can't see that you're sitting in an empty meeting. To them, you simply appear Online, and they can still call or message you normally.
Edit: Guys... Obviously, don't put the meeting on your calendar. Just create it and join it directly.
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u/Nightrunner2016 15h ago
Sometimes when I'm online I change my status to away because I don't want people to try and contact me. I feel for you guys that have to show as online for whatever reason. Screw that.
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u/xxjoker2014xx 15h ago
Why not change it to red for busy? Just curious.
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u/freeenlightenment 14h ago
I guess away means you’re not there. Busy means you’re there and can be made busier.
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u/apo86 11h ago
Maybe this is a German culture thing, but when someone messages or calls me and I'm busy, I just don't answer. Doesn't matter if my status is green, yellow or red, I'll get back to you when I get back to you (and to be fair most of the time that will be soon). If it's urgent open an incident ticket, we got those processes for a reason.
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u/cre8ivjay 10h ago
The entire world would be better if people followed this in every part of their life.
If I'm already having a conversation with you, get your damn nose out of your phone.
People praise multitasking, but it really isn't a good habit, nor is it all that productive.
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u/spacebunsofsteel 8h ago
A study at Stanford found that people that rated themselves as great multitaskers were the worst at it, but no one was very good.
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u/Important-Wing1432 4h ago
Additionally, it's not really multitasking because that's not possible. We just switch from task to task without giving anything our full attention and call it multitasking.
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u/iheartinfected 4h ago
"hey im leaving my 6th voicemail in the last 2 hours and its ... 9PM now well after business hours but id figure ide give ya one last call and leave a vm, even though your box tells me to only leave 1 voicemail and you will reply on the order they came in, owell i suck at following directions"
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u/bianary 9h ago
If it's urgent open an incident ticket, we got those processes for a reason.
At least where I've worked, if I open an incident ticket it's going to be 2-3 days before I hear anything. "Urgent" and "Incident Ticket" do not belong together.
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u/apo86 9h ago
That's what incident priorities are for and why there's an incident management organization, escalation procedures and 24/7 on-call support. So if your emergency is the production website is down, and you follow the procedure, that will be assigned and worked on within 30 minutes on a sunday. On the other hand if one employee out of 100k forgets their password, sure sucks for that guy, but it's not an emergency.
And I'm definitely not saying those processes are perfect. Or that there's anything wrong per se with trying to message people directly to get help. Just you don't get to complain, because there is no SLA on my chat replies. And there is an SLA on incident response times.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Depends a lot on the company.
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u/thingamajig1987 8h ago
And this is also why we shouldn't let users set their own priority level when opening a ticket
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u/Engineer9 14h ago
Busy means you've got another BORING meeting on in the background and would relish the distraction
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u/pongo_spots 13h ago
Crazy to me the number of boring meetings people attend. No agenda, no attenda. Keep it short, on topic, and have everyone focused. Learn to facilitate. I've shortened recurring meetings from an hour to 10 minutes
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u/bennett7634 13h ago
At that point you should just send an email. What’s the point of a meeting if you just list off information without allowing time for discourse?
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u/ni7en 9h ago
I had a guy the other day say "This could have been an email". I explained "Well, you don't seem to read emails so now we need the meeting"
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u/aerdvarkk 11h ago
Sending an email sometimes turns into miscommunication with a thread of 20 back and forth emails in response. At which point a 5 minutes face to face or direct call will resolve most of the confusion.
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u/The_Webweaver 10h ago
It's not just about sharing the information. It's about the whole team replying with relevant information that they may have that is affected by your new information. Conversation is not a problem as long as it is focused on the agenda,.
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u/carl5473 11h ago
So the organizer can tell people they are so busy all the time, just look at their calendar!
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u/Barejester 15h ago
I’m an away status fan too. My colleagues almost always ignore busy status - but never ignore away status.
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u/xxjoker2014xx 14h ago
Oh I see. I guess that's less confrontational then slamming that Decline button from the top rope like I do
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u/Wzup 12h ago
Spontaneous calls without contacting by IM first are the bane of my existence. Unless, of course, the call is to talk shit about somebody we both hate. Those calls get me through a week.
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u/WhirlThePearl 11h ago
those usually start with "hey, got a minute?" and for shit talking? Absolutely I do.
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u/FUBARded 13h ago
I think most people treat Busy as "actively working on something, but can be interrupted if it's important".
DND is there for when I really don't want to be interrupted, but I use it sparingly so I don't feel guilty about ignoring messages or unplanned calls.
I never intentionally set my status to Available or Away....those just happen when I'm away from my computer for too long or my Busy status lapses and I don't notice.
I'm virtually always genuinely busy enough that I don't want to deal with the random unplanned calls Available seems to invite, and I wouldn't want to work anywhere that scrutinises how often I'm Away.
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u/WeeoWeeoWeeeee 14h ago
“offline” or “do not disturb” or “presenting” they will sometimes leave you alone too
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u/mariog9 14h ago
Presenting is key... Thats what i respect most. Other statuses in like, i type and let the read it when they can
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u/uFFxDa 14h ago
“Hello”
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u/HugoEmbossed 13h ago
I want to add nohello.net to my status, but I don't want to be perceived as rude.
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u/uFFxDa 9h ago
I’ve just stopped responding at all to them until they actually ask a question. Any form of “hello” “got a sec?” “How are you” etc I just ignore. If have a sec, and you included what you actually want I can actually answer the question when I have more context of what “a sec” will entail. The usual perpetrators seem to have moved on to someone else much more welcoming than me. But as soon as I don’t respond then a few hours later they “follow up” with their actual question I answer it near immediately. Gotta try behavior train people.
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u/Nightrunner2016 14h ago
People will call me if I'm available and ping me if I'm busy. If I'm away I tend to be left alone, which is great. I do my best work with no interruptions. I'm in project management so teams reach outs can be quite frequent.
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u/Mesheybabes 14h ago
I'm not sure if it's a setting that the company turn on, but setting busy changes to Away after a time
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u/Rossco1874 14h ago
I get more people message me when set to busy as if it is a challenge to see how busy I really am.
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u/Quiquiro 13h ago
There was a time where I just force closed teams on the task manager and id just appear gray (not connected), sent emails and responded to them.
My boss calls me and asks me if I'm working because he could see the emails getting responded/forwarded but wasnt online on teams lol. Heard from others he was hella mad at me for that.
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u/spuckthew 12h ago
Because if the goal is to stop your status constantly changing, "Busy" will change to "Appear away" anyway after some amount of idle time.
Using "Appear away" in perpetuity prevents status yo-yoing.
I sometimes have it set for days at a time (as do some colleagues) and it'll show "Last seen Tuesday" even if it's Friday and I've been working all week lol.
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u/DoCrashOut 14h ago
The day I got hired, I turned my status offline purposefully. Teams says I’ve been gone for 5 years. Sometimes people mention my status isnt active and i just shrug and move on. As im still actively responding to people. Hasnt been an issue yet.
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u/humorMeeee 12h ago
Mine has been offline for so long there is no "last seen" anymore
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u/BadSmash4 10h ago
Mine been offline for so long they finally stopped putting my teams avatar on milk cartons
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u/OnTheEveOfWar 11h ago
My boss did this. First couple weeks I noticed he was always offline but still replies. He works remote and the type of guy who does stuff during the work days.
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u/_HeadlessBodyofAgnew 14h ago
I use a mouse jiggle app all the time for two main reasons:
-like most office jobs, there are days where I can stay on task / ahead of peers and still only do 1-2 hours of actual work. On those days I'll find something to either entertain myself or some way to be productive around the house but stay within earshot of notifications if anyone needs me.
-even on a busy day if I walk away to make a snack, use the bathroom, check on the kiddo, then my computer will lock itself after only like 5 minutes, and after it's locked I won't hear any Teams/Outlook notifications.
This freedom is key for feeling like I have a healthy work-life balance. If I had to sit eyes glued to my computer for 40 hours a week and not stray from it for 5 minutes I would be a husk.
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u/under_diagnosed 14h ago
Our laptops are locked down and any apps that they are aware of get wiped. They also see that the app was installed in the first place.
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u/charontid 14h ago
There are physical mouse jigglers which you rest a mouse on, when not in use ...
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u/smallmileage4343 11h ago
Just open notepad and put something heavy on your spacebar
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u/porn_is_tight 10h ago
I used my insert key for years, I used a rock that was the perfect shape without pressing other keys
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u/mayhem1906 14h ago
They sell hardware ones. Little USB sticks that are read as mice.
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u/Random_Guy_12345 14h ago
If you are going to buy one, i heavily recommend a physical one. It's a platform you put your actual mouse on top and simulates movement.
You plug it to the wall and it's impossible to detect because there is nothing to detect as nothing is plugged/installed into the work computer
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u/GuacaGuaca 13h ago
I agree and that’s what I have been using for years now. Apps and software that do the same are notorious for having viruses and malware and can be detected by IT.
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u/hazri 14h ago
I placed a thin piece of paper over my mouse's sensor. When the ceiling fan was on, the paper flaps around causing the cursor to move. Works better with a USB powered portable fan.
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u/PlatypusDream 13h ago
First, how fast is that fan going?!
Second, doesn't that require the mouse being upside-down?
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u/hazri 13h ago
Yes, it requires the mouse to be upside down. I usually hold the thin piece of paper in place with a book at one end, with the other end covering the sensor.
The ceiling fan usually set at max speed, but with a portable fan, I can set it at a lower speed since I can position it closer to the paper. Strong enough to make it flap up and down. Not too strong that the paper never fall down onto the sensor
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u/HaydenTheCrow 14h ago
Many companies have detection methods for jigglers
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u/_HeadlessBodyofAgnew 14h ago
I'm sure they do, and in the 6 years I've used one I've earned one promotion and zero reprimands. If they come at me for this, I'm happy to go work for someone else.
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u/syNc_1st 14h ago
I am just constantly on offline lol
People text me anyway but at the same time do not see if I am there or not.→ More replies (2)
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u/TheMangoBob 15h ago edited 11h ago
As someone who has access to the admin side of Teams, don't do this.
Meeting insights can definitely show who the participants are, how long the call is, how often etc..
Any of these can normally be requested to be seen by your manager. Normally, the bigger the org, the more aduited the employee activity is, so be careful with those mouse jigglers too...
Edit: I see a lot of curiosity about this, so I will add to this comment...
Generally, there isn't much you can do that cannot be in some way detected.
From experience, things like these become apparent when a user has already been highlighted as problematic, so these kinds of things are normally asked of IT to reinforce whatever decision has already been made. This is very applicable to smaller companies.
When it comes to bigger companies, or external/outsourced employees, there are tools that we use to see what is currently open (task manager style), and there are tools that show us the things you are currently looking at. Measurement tools for idle time, active time etc.. however, none of this is anyone's day-to-day job, it's normally upon someone's request that we look into this.
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u/TheNotSpecialOne 14h ago
As someone who also has access to Teams Admin, I can tell you us IT folk are not bothered what you do, it's HR who will be bothered if asked to investigate. But I can tell you in my current role past 6 years I have been asked by HR to investigate a total of zero times.
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u/spiegro 13h ago
I made the mistake of crossing the IT dept exactly once. Even tho my work was stellar and my boss loved me my Internet records sealed the deal.
Every job since then, every IT person I come into contact with at work I make it a point to remember their name and make small talk.
Not a hard thing to do, I actually like tech and have a personality type that tends to work well with most IT folks. I have a lot of varied interests anyway so I can find something to relate to just about anyone.
But IT are never the ones to make enemies of, as I found out the hard way.
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u/MiszeryLovesCompany 12h ago
lol what did you do?
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u/spiegro 11h ago
My Internet usage got flagged, my boss called me in and said she loved my work and didn't care what I did in-between assignments, but I need to keep IT off of her back.
That fueled my overconfidence in my boss's favor protecting me.
I went back to my desk, and noticed a little eye icon that wasn't there before. Figured my desktop was being actively monitored after that meeting.
So, instead of surfing the Internet in-between assignments I just put up a PowerPoint slide that only said "I'm still here bitches" instead.
Two weeks later I was called into a meeting late on Friday, and my boss was there with a tissue in her hand, crying, and HR and security were there. They let me go. She was crying because my 3-year-old son had just broken his leg earlier than week and I was about to lose my health benefits. I was a young father of 3, and we were friends sort of, so she took it even harder than I did lol
I came out to an empty office, they told everyone to go home early. They gave me a box for my stuff and that was that.
In hindsight it was dumb and I regret it. But that job sucked and my direct manager was a douche. The intern I hired took my job and worked there for like 8 years, so I like to think I played a big part in that 😂
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u/ThatNewWeirdGuy 10h ago
Ok, got to say, it's both funny and petty, but to get fired over it!? Damn.
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u/spiegro 8h ago
I get it. I got warned and then was antagonistic.
It was stupid and embarrassing and avoidable. I learned my lesson, but really I had unmedicated ADHD and the boring office life felt like murder.
And I do not work for bosses that want to micromanage my time as a policy. I've come a long way since then. But I'm getting draggeddddd in this here comments I'm gonna dip.
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u/Cool-Double-5392 8h ago
It was a fun story to read with my morning coffee lol. So something more came out of you sharing it. Sorry that happened to you.
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u/spiegro 8h ago
I tell it now with a a chuckle, but it was devastating. But I learned from it and I share my hard-won advice with new techies: don't fuck with IT 😂
Maybe that's obvious to some but it wasn't to me lol plus I'm more mature now and realized how to keep busy.
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u/CuteHand 6h ago
Yeah don’t make work uncomfortable for anyone. Don’t treat them like friends. You HAVE to see these ppl daily and everyone is trying to achieve something of their own. This is not about making friends with IT alone, it’s about team work and maybe even finding something you like doing.
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u/PipChaos 7h ago edited 6h ago
Just here to comment on how ridiculous it is that having a child's broken leg taken care of is tied to employment.
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u/SpecificBookkeeper43 7h ago
Direct manager was a douche? Is there more to this story? Did you also cross your direct manager somehow?
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u/spiegro 7h ago
He was likely the one wanted to investigate. He wanted me to update things manually, saying automating it was not possible.
I did it anyway because ain't nobody got time for that. Just because he couldn't do it doesn't mean I couldn't figure it out, and I did. Finished my work early and had no other assignments lined up.
I know what I did wrong here, and I was wrong. But the guy was an asshole about reviewing my work, he shared his shitty political opinions like it was actual news almost every morning, and he was resistant to any idea I ever had about how to do my job, which I was (and am) very good at.
He likely notified IT I was slacking and started this whole thing. It was entirely avoidable, but I definitely did not handle working with a difficult person very well.
In the same situation today I would have no problem navigating this situation. I was young and dumb.
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u/Snackz39 10h ago
As someone who works in IT, I highly doubt your IT department had anything to do with this. We generally don't look into people's logging, activity, etc. unless explicitly asked to do so by the business (HR or management). We don't care what you're doing as long as you aren't impacting the systems negatively. If they were looking into your activity, there was already another issue at hand that you may not have been aware of.
And as a side note, even if you did piss off IT somehow, we don't have the ability to fire people; that again had to come from someone in either upper management or HR, most likely both.
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u/JalapenoPopPoop 8h ago
Yeah I feel like the fact that they had enough downtime to have this powerpoint slide up constantly - and was using it to call their coworkers bitches - has more to do with it than IT going on a witchhunt after them
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u/Phytanic 8h ago
99.9% of things thatll get you on the IT shit list is things you can avoid by just being a decent person. Things like not demanding escalation 5s into the call, not being an asshole to those trying to help, not being obnoxious with followups despite being within the time frame you were told, etc. Worst thing you can do is say shit like "this is your job" and other related crap.
Hell even being a serial "fuck up" won't get you on most peoples shitlist if you're polite and don't deflect.
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u/Microwave1213 6h ago
That last paragraph is the biggest thing for sure. It’s one thing to be a fuck up, but it’s an entirely different thing to be a fuckup who is constantly trying to deflect blame to other people
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u/SecondAccountIsBest 10h ago
By the time we would be asked to investigate you were likely already fired anyway so it was pointless.
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u/NaziPunksFkOff 9h ago
Yeah these "they can see what you're doing!" stories always seem like "Santa Claus know when you're good or bad!"
It's all threats and you hear almost NO stories of someone being held to account for it. Although someone everyone knows a guy who knows a guy who worked with a guy who...
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u/limpingdba 15h ago
How is mouse jiggler activity monitored? Asking for a friend...
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u/Aether_Breeze 14h ago
If they are auditing your actual activity then it just shows constant mouse movement but no clicks or keyboard presses. Depending on your work this looks pretty obvious as a mouse jiggle.
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u/TheJudgingHat2222 12h ago
The idea here is that they'd never be suspicious enough to check if you're doing your job and not missing meetings.
Some people have to deal with micro managers that will get on your ass if your status goes yellow for even a second. The natural solution for anyone who wants breathing room to think and work is to find a workaround to prevent that scenario.
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u/alus992 10h ago
As a manager...if someone has time to micromanage ppl to that lvl it means that manager does nothing and gas too much free time at work to do so.
Fuck that. Job has to be done. If it is I don't care if my team plays Wow or doing laundry
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u/humeanation 8h ago
Same. But with the tiny caveat that they are ready to respond and drop WoW when I message with something urgent.
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u/Shot-Arugula8264 12h ago
99.9% of IT departments are not auditing mouse movements for realistic periodic clicking behavior.
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u/84theone 11h ago
No they won’t. but they will take a peak at the logs when your manager asks them to look into why you aren’t being productive.
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u/CompletelyRandy 14h ago
With the tools that we use, I couldn't detect that your mouse moved. We couldn't care less if you jiggled your mouse or not.
What we could detect is what software / scripts you ran to automate this. These would flag up pretty quickly from out side if you managed to install / run them.
Long story short, your manager may want to know what you are doing every minute of the day. IT couldn't care less.
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u/hazri 14h ago
I didn't install anything. But i did create my own powershell script to simulate one key stroke every minute. Will that trigger a flag from IT eventually ?
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u/NaturalSelectorX 13h ago
EDR software (endpoint detection and response) logs Powershell script activity in great detail. That might get caught up in an alert since sending keystrokes is a tactic sometimes used maliciously. The information is there if they want to find it.
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u/skieblue 13h ago
You know, for any work device, the simplest way to think of your relationship with it is to use it like it's being projected in front of your manager because it sometimes is.
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u/Frosty-Werewolf-5711 11h ago
And if you work for a government agency, as some in this thread have disclosed they do, another tool is to imagine the newspaper headlines that could be printed about you. "Government worker commits fraud" etc.
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u/CompletelyRandy 13h ago
Internal IT, likely not.
If you have a security team, this could get flagged. I could see you running this if your Endpoint was managed by me, you would then receive a call asking what you were doing. Internal processes take over then and I stop caring as it isn't malicious or a threat.
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u/foozledaa 13h ago
I was warned when I first joined that they could record 'every click'. While I don't doubt that's true, I can't imagine our org can afford to pay someone to review the data right now since we're a govt department in financial trouble. Don't give them a reason to look, and they probably won't.
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u/CompletelyRandy 13h ago
Every click is a stretch. I can tell everything that Endpoint done.
I could tell that you opened Word, saved a file (and see that file) and whether you ran a macro which then went off and touched something else. If you opened Word and typed "aaaa" I couldn't tell what you actually typed in that document.
Course I could see every site you went to, and all IPs which your machine tried to go. When you accessed internal recourses etc.
I could take a memory dump of your machine and view the contents, but that only gets done as part of an investigation and is certainly not standard practice.
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u/Cool_Guy_McFly 13h ago
This 100%. If you do anything that is a cybersecurity concern, it will absolutely get flagged by IT and escalated.
If you have some mouse jiggler app that poses no security risk, then IT doesn’t give a shit.
Whether or not you get caught boils down to micromanagement and if your management team is obsessively looking at your activity.
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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 15h ago
A simple way is by monitoring keystrokes. 8 hours of mouse movement with zero keystrokes is a bit of a giveaway.
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u/skieblue 15h ago
Anything that happens on a computer can be monitored. There is zero privacy on it.
I'm not aware of the specific products used to monitor but generally a user behaviour baseline can be established for what a "normal" employee/workday looks like. Long stretches of repetitive activity like the mouse being rocked back and forth or being clicked repeatedly become anomalies that are flagged.
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u/gdave44 15h ago
The software executable files that are commonly available are easily detected through their file hashes. So renaming them won't help either. In my environment, within an hour of even downloading one, your computer gets isolated and a security incident is initiated which does alert your supervisor.
In Security, I don't give a flip if you're slacking off at work. Those apps are very commonly infected with malware, so we actively monitor for them.
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u/WeeoWeeoWeeeee 14h ago
I don’t know why people feel they need to worry about this to begin with. Don’t people join meetings IRL without their laptop? Travel? Meet clients? There’s tons of normal reasons to be offline / away.
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u/xxjoker2014xx 15h ago
If I had to guess, they can probably see that your mouse moved 5 pixles to the left and then 5 pixels to the right in 1 second intervals.
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u/kissb555 15h ago
I have a mouse jiggler about 2 years now, even if they see it doesn’t really bother them
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u/fakeaccount572 14h ago
which is why i have a randomized wheel that moves under my mouse
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u/NoMention696 15h ago
Find it wild how whenever you see those “ai camera tracks workers” videos everyone’s calling it dystopian and “I wouldn’t work here ever” but every office seems to have adopted this with no pushback
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u/RobotSpaceBear 12h ago
Well seeing that i'm actually active when working from home, on company laptops is way different than filming me 8 hours a day inside my own home. That is not okay.
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u/DasArchitect 11h ago
I rejected a very well paid job offer that required very invasive monitoring.
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u/IcedGooseMaverick 12h ago
Jesus Christ how bored are people that would do this? If deliverables are being met, no one should ever check this.
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u/_aggressivezinfandel 11h ago
Some people in management positions have nothing better to do than micromanage. Makes them feel “important” and “powerful”, aka small pp energy
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u/Sadpanda0 15h ago
Can they see if you’re online because teams is open on your phone Vs your computer?
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u/stefiscope 14h ago
Yes it is possible to tell this through your sign-in logs. E.g. In Microsoft, the Entra user logs show which platform/device type you're authentication is coming from. So it will show Windows or iOS for example, browser details. You have to go looking for it though, much the same way as the Meeting logs.
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u/chaoticinfinity 13h ago
Someone at my org got clever and figured out how to enumerate all that automatically, to have a report generated and checked against physical badge ins. We use Teams to check in every morning, and they use this to determine who tried to 'clock in' from traffic and who's actually in the office. They compare against VPN authentications for WFH days. A few people were let go over this. Also, caught 2 coffee badgers in the process, I guess.
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u/flipster14191 10h ago
Boy am I glad I don't work for your org.
Not sure if it would be worse if the coffee badgers were getting all their work done and still let go, or if they were being incredibly unproductive and no one even noticed until these reports were generated.
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u/SpeccyScotsman 13h ago
I've noticed it also keeps you online if you go into the settings menu and click preview camera. What would that show up as?
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u/sadness_elemental 14h ago
hardware mouse jigglers are like 10 bucks, if you want to go low tech put your mouse on an analogue clock, the hands moving will keep it awake
never really tried either though, i just close teams, fuck em
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u/Phoenix2111 12h ago
Lol yeah I got caught fowl of one of the mouse jigglers. We had it installed for a legitimate reason which was approved (needed to keep device active for other displays etc.) - but long after this use case want away, I got cocky as I knew they didn't have monitoring in place, and started using it to keep auto lockout off when pottering in the house etc. While WFH.
Fast forward quite some time, manager gets in touch asking for me to explain why I mighg need to use a mouse jiggler.. Turns out they'd finally matured and implemented monitoring that had alerted them to this running.
Quite the awkward conversation lol. But luckily, my manager was a great guy and proper chill, and was more interested in performance and delivery than micro managing, so gave me more of an 'eyebrows raised tut tut tut' reaction, and entrusted I'd stop using stuff like that there & then, instead of kicking off or something.
And in fairness, never betrayed that trust since! And did meet all deadlines etc. So, I'm grateful for a decent manager haha
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u/ClayDenton 10h ago
Yep, this. I am a manager in a technology company. Generally this information is not requested and IT couldn't care less. But if we are having performance concerns on the business side, we will ask for logs and this will all stand as evidence against you. Better to just be Away. Saying all that, if you're in good standing it really won't matter.
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u/alphvader 15h ago
Are you sure admins can't see you're in a call by yourself?
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u/mohawkal 15h ago
Admins and anyone with calendar access would be able to work it out pretty easily.
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u/Seyon 15h ago
Yeah, we figured that out. So 3 of us started doing group calls.
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u/hamjamham 14h ago
With the admin tools they can tell very easily if you were participating in said meeting. Can't really all just play music either through your mic as then it'd say everyone was talking 100% of the time, or none of the time.
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u/LtotheAI 15h ago
my company requires that all calendars are visible to all other employees. good idea for others though
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u/_Kramerica_ 13h ago
Gross. Get a lot of nosey ass people monitoring your calendar when it’s none of their business.
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u/Queeg_500 14h ago
Tbh, I do this when people just won't take 'busy' as an answer.
"In a meeting" is a far more reliable way of not being bothered.
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u/ForHelp_PressAltF4 14h ago
Ummm... So teams had an engagement metric now. It totally catches this stuff. I've seen it at my work. It has graphs that show who spoke, how long each person was off mute, and so on.
Mouse jigglers are equally useless for the same reason.
Sorry ... Welcome to the AI surveillance state.
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u/IamScottGable 12h ago
Yup. Thank God I have a client laptop that I can be "working" on
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u/PendulousNuts 10h ago
Mouse jigglers are equally useless for the same reason.
How so? Teams has no knowledge of my mouse jiggler.
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u/Kashik 10h ago
A friend of mine works for a Chinese company. Feishu, their teams clone, sums up every meeting and names the MVP in the summary of who was the most present and engaged.
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u/bacan_ 15h ago
Doesn’t having a slide show open for a presentation also accomplish this?
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u/Hadrians_Fall 12h ago
That keeps my laptop screen on but doesn’t keep Teams in an active status for me. Anything I’m missing?
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u/CeruleanSovereign 15h ago
At my work IT admins can see if you're in a meeting by yourself. So instead of using a meeting I would set a timer for 4 minutes and go do whatever around the house before returning to the laptop to wiggle the mouse and restarting the timer
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u/Sadpanda0 15h ago
Can they see if you’re online because teams is open on your phone Vs your computer?
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u/IndianaBronez 14h ago
Yep, and if you’re on your phone, they can see your phone’s battery %, etc. while in a meeting
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u/_Kramerica_ 13h ago
I get why some of the higher ups use their phones for work, but anybody else not a high up manager I don’t understand giving such access to your personal device.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 13h ago
If someone needs to use their phone for work, it should be provided by work, and then it's separate from your personal phone.
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u/FredThePlumber 12h ago
Exactly what I do. Work phone is for work and personal phone is mine. No I don’t keep the work phone on me if I’m not working.
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u/chardeemacdennisbird 11h ago
If you're on Android (not sure about Apple) your work profile and personal profile are totally separate. They can't see what you're doing when you're not in an app downloaded from the work side.
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u/mrGrinchThe3rd 8h ago
Agree in principle. In practice, if I have a remote job where being 'active' on teams isn't closely tracked, then by installing teams on my (personal) phone I can go about my day and not even be at my desk and still be available for messages or calls when needed.
Usually I won't even leave the house but having my phone notify me when something happens so that I can make my way back to the desk is super useful and actually lets me be less tethered to work. I never answer things outside of work hours. And of course work wouldn't provide me with a work phone for this purpose.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 8h ago
I'm all for being allowed to choose to use your own phone. I think it would be strange to be required to do so.
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u/erwtje-be 15h ago
For me, the trick with a spoon on the trackpad works
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u/seriousgourmetshit 5h ago
I've always just opened a notepad and put something heavy enough on the space bar to continuously type
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u/mace4242 10h ago
This is what I do. I even know it works because I have access to the tracking dashboard 🤣
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u/PharomachrusMocinno 15h ago edited 15h ago
I have Teams on my phone and when I set my iPhone to not sleep (edit: Auto-Lock = Never) and keep Teams open it stays green.
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u/av0w 14h ago
Most companies enforce rules on the phone to lock through Microsoft Intune
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u/pittybrave 11h ago
I do this but not even to be duplicitous. I have 3 monitors so usually when I’m working I’m not on the monitor with teams and it shows me as away. So I’ll open teams on my phone so it actually shows me as active
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u/KhalilGibrony 15h ago
I do this all the time. OP is correct, but the wording is a bit off.
You’re not creating a meeting that puts a block on your calendar.
Go to the Calendar tab and hit “Meet now” in the top right. It opens an instant meeting with just you and never touches your calendar.
Your status flips to “In a meeting,” but you can manually change it to available or whatever else you want.
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u/Neither-Regret-4141 13h ago
My status changes to “in a call” when I do this which is even better
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u/mambotomato 15h ago
People watch what color your status dot is?
Jesus.
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u/packageofcrips 14h ago
Probably not, but if my bosses went to message me at a random time of day and I've been "Away" for over an hour, they might have questions.
Probably not straight away, but they would certainly mentally note it
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u/phxkross 13h ago
The problem isn't the manager noticing, the problem is someone who is frequently "away" for over an hour when they're on the clock.
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u/CosmicUnlearner 14h ago
There are plenty of toxic micro managing managers out there. Most managers think their staff is not doing enough work, so they will usually fill the days up with unnecessary meetings , teams chats, status updates. And for some people they can be working on multiple projects where just interacting with managers and truly just creates mental exhaustion.
I don’t think people are trying to not work at all but the corporate work culture has gotten way out of hand and sometimes this is just a way to show the middle finger to corporate work! And we all need a paycheck. Lol13
u/NotMyUsualLogin 14h ago
Managers do. And their managers. And the execs.
“Employee metrics” is a big deal - albeit imo pretty worthless.
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u/IgnoresReplyGigachad 11h ago
It's also the fact that sometimes I take a 20 minute break, reading or fixing something in the home. But I have the volume on speaker on high so I can react on any incoming message.
So I am fully available and I'll answer anything that comes in. Getting an "Away" icon is basically false in this case.
And yes people read this. Sometimes I'm in a meeting and someone wants to drag someone in and they say "uuh the guy has been away for 15 minutes" and will literally not drag him in due to that. So it has effects even outside the monitoring employees thing.
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u/My5t3ry 15h ago
Just open a blank excel sheet and place something of weight on a letter and let it type into a cell. Keeps you online in teams
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u/Momo616 15h ago
You can also highlight 4 boxes in excel and put something heavy on the tab key and it just runs through them on loop.
Only downside is if you're IT department is savy enough to monitor keystrokes they might find it odd your pressing a letter or tab thousand of times
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u/SpikeyBXL 15h ago
isn't a weight on the CTRL key a better option then?
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u/Morgalgorithm 11h ago
Shhhhh. I’ve been doing this for 5 years between 3 different large companies and never been caught. Don’t alert the bootlicking nerds.
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u/nomaadbro 14h ago
Wouldn't monitoring keystrokes also log passwords which would indicate that they have all your passwords? It can have your hashed password, but not your literal one. At that point it's your word against theirs who leaked it. Of course their word is a lot stronger but they couldn't deny that they have it and that there is absolutely no possibility that the issue is on their side. From a security perspective I doubt they log your keystrokes. They can monitor your activity, what is happening on your screen, what tasks are running for how long, but not you IO devices. At that point we would could go down the rabbit hole that they are recording your mic and camera constantly and with home office in action constant monitoring of these would end up in a disgusting lawsuit.
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u/Proof_by_exercise8 13h ago
probably log just the frequency each letter/key is pressed over some time interval, not the order
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u/WeeoWeeoWeeeee 14h ago
IT admins don’t care at all. I’d worry about spyware installed by employer. Also I would leave an employer that needs to spy on employees like this.
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u/SarcasticNut 14h ago
DO NOT DO THIS. I work in IT, this is extremely easy to see if asked for your meeting records by your boss.
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u/SCSP_70 15h ago
Blue collar here… what do yall do all day?
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u/JayKomis 14h ago
We really just get shamed for taking breaks and walking away from our computers for more than a couple of minutes. A company’s culture and your team’s manager really influences this as well.
Then of course you have the other story where sometimes your employer knows what you do, but they don’t know how long it takes you to do it. They assume that you stay busy all day with your assigned work, and they’re happy with the output, but they don’t realize that you can do said work in like 4-6hrs but still get paid for 8hrs.
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u/SilasTalbot 11h ago
They often know, but as you say, they're happy with the output (and are reasonable people).
They also know there's a little left in the tank for emergencies, which is always nice to have because they're also managing workload with THEIR bosses up the chain.
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u/TriRemorse 14h ago
Meetings. But when not meetings; talking about meetings with colleagues. But when not talking; reading and or creating materials.
Its pretty crazy honestly. Nice in a way, but would often propably rather have a job that does something real
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u/AbsorbedWheat42 10h ago
"probably rather have a job that does something real"
I send car service reminders by email and mail.
My wife works in drug discovery. A previous project was treating Parkinson's disease.
I'm always embarrassed when people ask what I do but the pay is VERY good...
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u/IgnoresReplyGigachad 11h ago
It's like if you were paid to do homework eights hours a day.
Can you actually spend eight hours doing homework? No, that's silly and unproductive. But the traditional workplace demands these 40 hour weeks.
So what you actually do is spread out the homework in nice chunks during the day. But then you end up with a large "AWAY" mark when you take your break which your clueless manager sees as stealing time.
That's about it.
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u/Chuterito99 15h ago
Or buy a 4 euro mouse jigglaa
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u/Nippahh 15h ago
If it's a laptop just place a metal spoon on the mousepad. It won't move the mouse but it'll think you have your hand on it. You have to physically monitor the computer in order to see you're gaming the system. You even have plausable deniability if for some reason people would figure it out
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u/InhibitedMe 15h ago edited 1h ago
Open Outlook calendar, hover over the "Today" button, weigh the 'down arrow' key with something so that it's always pressed, boom. Outlook scrolls through all the buttons and you appear online. No programs needed.
Edit: clearer so that you end up in August 2087
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u/FangedFreak 15h ago
In a chat window, I just use something to hold down the Shift button which keeps things from locking
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u/topperj 14h ago
I keep mine permanently set to away so I don't get silly "hey you" messages
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u/TheSwedishOprah 15h ago
LPT don't work for a company that disrespects you so much that they track garbage like this.
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u/DJToaster 14h ago
yeah i work in IT for a business that doesnt track anything like this, we use lansweeper to see if anyone has dodgy programs installed, but outside of that everyone is trusted that they're getting stuff done
even being 'away' on teams isn't deemed an issue, if work isn't getting done, it's treated the same way it would if you werent getting work done in the office. other than that, everyone is left to their own devices
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u/SeaBuilding3911 11h ago
Next thing you know you are explaining to IT why your screen is cracked when you closed the lid and forgot the spoon
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u/clothanger 15h ago
"Thanks for creating the meeting for yourself, we will forward this information to the HR team to see if they need one with you as well" - admin.
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u/JobAnxious2005 14h ago
Do not do this!
If your employer has other measures in place you will flag as being in your own meeting, all alone.
Aka here comes the call with HR
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u/arecbawrin 12h ago
All of these tips...including yesterday's big post about mouse jigglers....that is a thing of the past. They have the ability to use AI for any uncommon behavior or pattern...so you're not fooling anyone unless your company is just incompetent.
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u/Aware_Flow1070 12h ago
The issue with this is that anyone with access can see you sitting in Teams meetings by yourself,and will know what you're up to.
Source : ITAdmin
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