Update: It is back!
The Problem with the Ghost or Phantom presence continues, and it might cause more and more problems! Spoiler alter: Microsoft is working on it.
Ghost presence
First a wrap-up of the issue itself:
- The Microsoft Teams Clients sets my Skype for Business presence to available (green) as soon as I start it
- When I manually set myself to busy or do not disturb (Both should indicate red) it stays with available (green) as Skype for Business presence
- If I place a phone call or join a meeting in Microsoft Teams (Yep, I use Microsoft Teams more and more) the Skype for Business presence is still available (green) Chats and calls from Skype for Business arrive on my (iOS based) Smartphone Client, because I don’t start the Skype for Business Client all the time (anymore).
Conversation with and without a Skype for Business Client on a smartphone
When I (manually) sign out on all smartphone clients the problem escalates:
- The other party sees me as available (green)
- Any call is immediately redirected to my Voicemail, and I’m not notified
- Any chat message is ending as mail notification. With a delay between 5 and 30 minutes (based on my testing and what contacts told me)
Call ending on Voicemail
Call notification as Mail
Chat notification as Mail
I told many of my contacts, that they should be patient and this is something that could happen during the cut over from Skype for Business towards Microsoft Teams.
Now the good news: Microsoft is working on it! It is part of the Roadmap and the unified presence status should come in Q1/2018.
What else can we do? Pretty simple: Send feedback to Microsoft! The Microsoft Teams product is very much community driven and the UserVoice feedback is great. Please think about it: Try to make the software better instead of not using it because you find something that you don’t like. It took a very long time for Microsoft to change from a internal to an community driven development approach. And we all should support this great idea… Nope, I’m not getting sponsored from Microsoft for this.
And you might also vote for the already existing request on UserVoice. Even if the status is “Working on it” and that this is part of the roadmap.