IT Infrastructure Architect

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May 17, 2023

Use PowerShell to prevent your IM presence becoming 'Inactive'

IT Infrastructure Architect

Presence indication in Teams, Skype for Business and other IM clients is really useful, especially when working remotely. However, when we are on the phone, in a meeting, reading, or waiting for a lengthy script to run then lack of keyboard or mouse activity can make your presence change to 'inactive' inappropriately.

To fix this, the following simple PowerShell script can force your presence indication to remain active by sending two (simulated) pressed of your Scroll Lock key in quick succession every three minutes. The keyboard activity is detected by the IM client and your presence indication remains green and 'active'.

How to use

Open a PowerShell window. Cut and paste the following code into the window. The code will run until stopped, triggering every three minutes. There is no output to the screen.

#keep active
$wshell = new-object -com "wscript.shell"
while ($true)
	{
	$wshell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
	start-sleep -milliseconds 100
	$wshell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
	start-sleep -seconds 180
	}

How to stop the code from running

Either press ctrl-c to stop the code running, or simply close the PowerShell window.