Short answer: Put focus time and on-call shifts in your calendar and let Don’t Interrupt turn them into a Slack or Microsoft Teams status, with Do Not Disturb if you want it. Focus time and out-of-office calendar events are recognised, and any other label, such as “on call”, works by matching a word in the event’s name. Neither Slack nor Teams will do this from a calendar on its own.

What your team sees by default

Slack’s calendar apps set “In a meeting” or “Out of office”, and Microsoft Teams shows Busy or In a meeting from your Outlook calendar. Neither shows “Focus time” or “On call” because of an event with that name, and neither shows the reason you are unavailable. Teammates have to guess, or you update your status by hand and forget to change it back.

Set it up once

Step 1: Put it in your calendar

Make recurring events for the times you want to show, for example “Focus time” every morning and “On call” for each shift. Google Calendar’s focus time and out-of-office event types are recognised, and a plain event with the words in its name works too.

Step 2: Connect Slack, Teams or both

Sign up with Slack or Teams and add your calendar. You can link several Slack workspaces and Teams tenants to one account (Basic 1, Plus 3, Pro 10), so a developer in two workspaces shows the same focus time in both.

Step 3: Choose what each event does

  • Focus time: use the focus time event settings. Write a status such as “Heads down until 12”, and switch on Do Not Disturb to silence Slack or Teams banners.
  • On call: add a Calendar Rule for the phrase on call. Give it a status such as “On call: ping me”, and leave Do Not Disturb off so alerts still reach you.

Putting {{name}} in the text adds the event’s name. Private events show “Private event”. Basic has 1 rule, Plus 5 and Pro 20.

Step 4: Pick presence carefully

On Teams, Do Not Disturb silences banners and sends calls to voicemail, but lets people on your priority access list through. Appear offline does not silence Teams: Microsoft says you still get notifications. For deep work use Do Not Disturb.

Limits to know about

  • Don’t Interrupt reads your calendar. It doesn’t connect to paging tools such as PagerDuty, so the on-call shift has to be in your calendar.
  • It can’t yet set a status by who is invited, such as 1:1s or external calls. That is planned.
  • Updates land within about five minutes.
  • A status you typed yourself stays unless the Override status option is on.

Frequently asked questions

Can Slack show “Focus time” on its own?

Slack’s calendar apps set “In a meeting” and “Out of office”. Slack’s help pages don’t describe a status for focus time from a calendar. You can set one by hand.

How do I show on-call status in Slack and Teams?

Add the shift to your calendar, then add a Calendar Rule for the phrase on call in Don’t Interrupt with the status you want.

Should focus time turn on Do Not Disturb?

Usually yes for deep work. For on call, most people leave it off so alerts get through. You choose per event type or rule.

Does it work if I use both Slack and Teams?

Yes. One calendar can drive a Slack status and a Teams status together.