Custom Microsoft Teams Durations Doesn't Stick

Hi @Tiffany Stallings, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum. 

From your sharing, this is a very common and expected behavior in Microsoft Teams. Teams doesn't independently decide your "Away" status but it receives signals from your device. If you're doing paperwork without any computer input (keyboard or mouse activity) for about 5-10 minutes, your operating system will report you as "idle" and then Teams will change your status to "Away". About the "Duration" feature, it's used for overriding your status for an event in Teams (like a meeting) and it doesn't prevent the "Away" status due to inactivity that your device notifies Teams. 

To keep your status available, you can try one of these workarounds:  

1- Use continuous background activity (like a Teams meeting) 

• Go to calendar tab in teams > click meet now to create a meeting 
• Don't invite anyone and keep the meeting running background 
• Your status now will be "In a call", you can change it to "Available" with the duration feature. This status won't be reverted to "Away" due to inactivity 

2- Use a third-party mouse jiggle app 

These apps will run in the background and simulate user activity to prevent the PC from going idle. There're many good apps for mouse jiggling you can choose like Caffeine, MoveMouse, etc. but we highly suggest you can try using Microsoft PowerToys Awake. This is a free tool from Microsoft that will keep the computer awake without managing your device power settings.  

You can read more details and download this app via PowerToys Awake - Keep Windows Computer Awake Tool | Microsoft Learn 

Note: Please understand that our initial response does not always resolve the issue immediately. However, you can try workaround and notify us whether it helps, we can work together to find a solution. 

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.  

I'm looking forward to your reply.

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