How to use the status message in Microsoft Teams

For this blog post I wanted to share a little tip with you, I got the idea from Tammy and her jolly Christmas message and thought it was a great idea for us that works as consultants or for in example an activity based office where you don't have a specific seat.

I’ve written about setting a status message before in my post How to do normal Skype for Business things in Microsoft Teams but this is the next level 😉.

Let’s have a quick look at what we had in Skype for Business before we move back to Microsoft Teams. There we had two different ways of showing a status:

1. The equivalent to what we have in Microsoft Teams, a status message that could be what you feel like – in the image bellow “Hello”

2. The location you are at, in Skype this message differed dependent on your location. So, if you added Working from home when on your home wi-fi Skype would remember that the next time you connected to the same wi-fi. This is not available in Microsoft Teams at the moment, here’s a user voice regarding this – vote if you like this functionality!

Ok we have the option to set a status in Microsoft Teams, but it won’t understand where we are based on wi-fi, let’s not mope about that and do the best we can do with what we have!

What I want to show you now is how to set your status message and to make sure everyone sees that message!

1. Set your status message

In the desktop app or in the browser click on the icon with your face or initials on it in the right corner. There you will have an option called Set status message

When clicking on it you can add your message and a few other things:

• In your message you can write text, add emojis (if you’re into that) and also something that is quite new is to tag a team or a person - perfect if you want people to contact someone else as in my example

• Show when people message me – this setting is vital for what I’m showing after this so don’t forget the step 😊

• Clear status message after X amount of days, here you can decide how long the specific message should be show

When you are ready click Done. If you click on the icon with your face you can see your current message and also delete it/edit it there if you want to.

Of course, you can do this from your mobile as well, just click the hamburger menu in the left corner in the app, click Set your status and then you are good to go with the same settings

2. How will it look on the other side?

Ok one more reminder, don’t forget to check the Show when people message me when you add your status 😊.

When someone writes to you, they will see your status messages if a few different ways:

In a 1-2-1 chat the message will appear just over the new message box:

When somebody @ mention you in a new conversation and in a reply:

The message will not appear if you @ mention a team or a channel, I guess it would be crazy to show everyone’s status message.

Your status message will also show if someone hoover your icon:

What do I think about this feature?

I think this is a great feature for people that doesn’t have a specific office. I miss the function with location updating based on wi-fi, but I wouldn’t say that’s necessary 😊.

I think you should give it a try!