Unlocking the Secret to Keeping Your Team's Status Green: 5 Effective Solutions

Unlocking the Secret to Keeping Your Team's Status Green: 5 Effective Solutions

The Importance of Team Status in Project Management

Staying in touch and open for collaboration with colleagues while working from home helps employers feel comfortable with the Work From Home set up and genuinely unites the team under a common communication platform.

In a project management scenario with multiple people involved, being Available on Teams makes it easier and more likely that colleagues will contact you when thy need you. The alternative is that you are showing as Away or unavailable.

Having a way to maintain your presence status in the green Available state empowers employees to step away from the computer without concern for showing Away or their PC from logging out.

Common Challenges in Maintaining a Green Teams Status

With Microsoft Teams the Presence feature will typically show an employee's status as Away after a period of 5 minutes inactivity. There is no overide setting for this so the typical solution is for an employee to keep rushing back to their computer every 5 minutes just to jiggle the mouse or tap a key on their keyboard.

Tools and Software for Employee Tracking

In today's digital age, numerous tools and software are available to help track and manage the status of team members and their status. Project management software, such as Asana, Trello, or Jira, can provide a centralized platform for task management, progress tracking, and collaboration. These tools allow team members to update task statuses, track time spent on each task, and communicate with one another seamlessly.

In addition to project management software, communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can facilitate real-time communication and collaboration, improving team productivity and ensuring that everyone is aligned.

Solution 1: Buy a Mouse Jiggler

From $20 to $50 the social media sensation that is the mouse jiggler is fun and easy to visualise. It generates or simulates mouse movements by moving your mouse hardware. A simple idea that works well albeit at a cost.

Solution 2: View a GIF image in the Teams chat.

This has worked for us before however we found it unreliable and finding the moving image will become a nusance when you just want to pop away from your computer at a moments notice.

Solution 3: Write software or a script

If you are tech savvy and happen to be familiar with VBA or other scripting or developer  languages then it may be easy for you to create a script that keeps your computer active as it runs.

**Solution 4: Hold down the Caps Lock key**

We discovered that holding down the Caps Lock key or the Shift key while your cursor is in a text field will reliably activate the repeating key function in Windows OS. This means that you can turn you keyboard into a keyboard jiggler without the need for addition power or a mouse device.

**Solution 5: Caps N Lock® Keyboard Clip**

By building on the discovery of Solution 4, we invented the Caps N Lock® keyboard clip. The clip is designed to fit all modern laptops and keyboards. It can be flipped to suit smaller keyboards and is typically 75% lower in price compared to a mouse jiggler.

Conclusion

Maintaining a green status while working from home as part of a team is not an impossible feat. By implementing a solution outlined in this article, you can boost collaboration, and ensure project success. Clear communication, regular check-ins, proper resource allocation, conflict resolution, and a culture of continuous improvement are the keys to keeping people in a team working well. Having solutions to keep the team connected and their Team's status green further enhances their efficiency.

Embrace these strategies, harness the power of technology, and foster a positive work culture to take your team's productivity to new heights. Remember, a green status not only signifies collaboration but in empowering staff to control their status you contribute to a respectful working environment.

Just attach the Caps N Lock® keyboard clip to your Caps Lock key.

View Products here

Back to blog