Teams Status Hack

There are lots of changes going on in the world now, especially with everyone working from home.

I’ve been a remote developer for about 10 years now so I’m well accustomed to all of the tools and technologies we use to make our lives easier.

One tool I’m using a lot (like everyone else) is Microsoft Teams. We used to use Skype in the good old days, then Skype for Business and Lync and teams is a massive improvement in every area however a simple change seems to have slipped in with a recent release that seems to be bugging a lot of people.

After 10 minutes of inactivity, Teams sets your status to “Away”. There is no option to override this or configure it in any way. Some of you might remember that with Lync you could configure the time before your status changed.

There is a simple solution though thanks to PowerShell.

Just take this simple script and run it in PowerShell and It will keep your PC awake by issuing a key press every minute.

while(1){
  $shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
  $shell.SendKeys('+[F15]')
  Start-Sleep -Seconds 59
}

I’m sure this could be improved so any suggestions are greatly recieved.