What is Online Status?

Online Status, also known as Presence, is a dynamic indicator within unified communications and collaboration platforms that shows the real-time availability of your colleagues. Its primary purpose is to help team members know at a glance whether a person is available to communicate, reducing unnecessary interruptions and streamlining workflows.

A user's status can be updated automatically by the system or set manually to reflect various states, including:

• Available: The user is active and ready to communicate.
• Away: The user has been inactive or has manually set their status to away.
• Busy / In a Meeting: Often synchronized with the user's calendar to show they are occupied.
• Do Not Disturb (DND): The user is actively focusing and will not receive notifications.
• Offline: The user is not logged into the application.

This feature is often tightly integrated with the phone system, using color-coded icons to provide even more context. For example, a user's status might automatically change to red to show they are on a call or yellow to indicate their phone is ringing.

Many modern platforms also allow for custom status messages, enabling users to share more detailed information about their availability, such as "Working from home today" or "In a client meeting until 2 PM."