Desktop app
Syncing Cradle presence with Microsoft Teams
Keep your Cradle presence in sync with Microsoft Teams (and by extension Outlook) so calendar blocks and meeting status reflect on the phone too.
If you sign in to Cradle with a Microsoft work account, Cradle can mirror your Microsoft Teams presence onto your Cradle presence. When Teams says you're in a meeting, Cradle stops ringing you. When Teams clears, Cradle ranges back to Available.
This is opt-in. You enable it once from the Cradle settings screen.
What syncs (and what doesn't)
The bidirectional mirror covers three states:
- Available in one shows as Available in the other.
- Busy in one shows as Busy in the other.
- Away in one shows as Away in the other.
Because Teams reads your Outlook calendar, anything that puts you in Busy in Outlook (a meeting, a calendar block, a Focus event) flows through Teams into Cradle. That's the headline benefit and the headline catch, see "Be careful with calendar blocks" below.
Going offline doesn't sync in either direction. Quitting Teams won't take Cradle offline, and quitting Cradle won't take Teams offline. Each app keeps control over its own end-of-day state. This is intentional, so closing one app doesn't make you unreachable on the other.
Turning it on
- Open the Cradle desktop app.
- Go to the settings screen.
- In the presence panel, find MS Teams Presence Sync and toggle it on.
The toggle only appears for users signed in with a Microsoft work account. If you signed in with a Google Workspace account, you won't see it.
Be careful with calendar blocks
If you block time on your Outlook calendar for focus work, prep, lunch, or anything else, Teams will set your status to Busy for that block. With MS Teams Presence Sync turned on, that Busy flows into Cradle too, and Cradle won't ring you for calls during the block.
That's often what you want. It's not always.
If you rely on calendar blocks as personal reminders rather than do-not-disturb requests, leaving MS Teams Presence Sync on will quietly stop your phone ringing during those blocks. Two options:
- Keep the sync on, and only block calendar time when you actually don't want calls.
- Turn the sync off, and set your Cradle presence manually.
There's no middle ground today, the sync either mirrors all calendar-driven Busy states or none of them.
What you should see
- Start a Teams meeting and your Cradle presence flips to Busy within a few seconds.
- End the meeting and your Cradle presence flips back to Available.
- Set yourself to Away in Teams and your Cradle teammates see you as Away too.
Turning it off
Open the settings screen, find MS Teams Presence Sync in the presence panel, and toggle it off. Cradle goes back to managing your presence independently from Teams.