Your Cradle presence tells Cradle and your teammates whether you're ready to take calls. Most of the time you can leave it alone, the automatic settings will handle the day-to-day. There are two times worth setting it manually: heading into a meeting, and finishing for the day.

Before you start

If you're new to presence, read How does presence work? first. This article assumes you know the states.

Where to see your current presence

The presence dot lives in the top right of the Cradle desktop app, just to the left of the Audio Settings speaker icon. The colour of the dot is the colour of your current presence (green = Available, orange = Away, red = Busy, grey = Offline). The dot is a read-only indicator; you change your presence from the Settings tab.

Change your status, the two ways

Both routes do the same thing. Pick whichever is faster from where you are.

From the Settings tab

Open the Cradle desktop app.
Go to the Settings tab.
Click your name at the top of the presence panel.
Pick a state, Available, Away, Busy, or Offline (manual).

From the system tray / menu bar

Windows: click the Cradle icon in the system tray (bottom right of the screen, near the clock). A menu appears with your presence options.
macOS: click the Cradle icon in the menu bar (top right of the screen). A menu appears with your presence options.

The tray / menu-bar route works whether the Cradle app window is open or not.

Say how long, and why

When you set yourself Busy, Away or Offline, you can say how long for and add a short reason, so your team knows when you'll be back.

Pick Busy, Away or Offline.
Choose how long: 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, Rest of the day, Until a date, or Until I change it.
Add a reason if you like, up to 20 characters. "At the dentist" fits; a sentence won't.

Your teammates see the time and the reason next to your name, for example "Busy until 3:00pm" with "At the dentist" underneath.

What happens when the time is up depends on the status:

Busy and Away go back to Available by themselves, and the reason clears with them.
Offline doesn't. The date shows to your team and then lapses, but you stay Offline until you change it. That way, if you're on leave and Cradle is still open on your work computer, it won't start ringing you on the morning you're due back.

Decline all calls while you're Busy

Busy normally stops Cradle ringing you for incoming calls, but teammates can still transfer a call to you. If you need no interruptions at all, turn on Decline all calls when you set Busy. Cradle then declines every call while you're Busy, including transfers from your team. You can still make calls. It only works while Cradle is open.

When to set each one manually

Available, when you want calls. You don't usually need to set this yourself; Cradle puts you here when you launch the app and when you come back from Idle.
Away, when you've stepped away for a few minutes. Cradle will still send you calls if no-one else picks up first.
Busy, when you're in a meeting, on a deep-focus task, or otherwise can't take a call. Calls won't ring you. Teammates can still see you and transfer to you if they need to.
Offline (manual), when you're done for the day but still have the app running. Quitting the app does the same thing automatically.

The automatic settings

Three automatic settings live in the same panel as the presence states. They're the difference between forgetting to update your status and never needing to.

Automatically set me to away after

Sets you to Idle (same effect as Away) when your computer hasn't been touched for the chosen length of time. Useful for short coffees and lunches.

Open the settings screen in the Cradle desktop app.
Find Automatically set me to away after in the presence panel.
Pick 1 MIN, 2 MIN, 5 MIN, 10 MIN, or Never to disable.

The default is 2 minutes. Never turns it off entirely if you'd rather manage your own status.

Offline detection

When this is on, Cradle sets you Offline automatically when you quit the app, when your computer goes to sleep, or when you lose your internet connection. This is your end-of-day safety net.

Open the settings screen.
Find Offline detection in the presence panel.
Toggle it on or off.

We recommend leaving this on, without it, a flat laptop battery overnight can leave you looking Available to your team while no calls actually reach you.

Wrap-up time

A short window after a call ends where Cradle won't send you a new call, so you can finish notes and take a breath. See Wrap-up time for the detail.

What you should see

Your name on the settings screen shows the colour and label of whatever state you just picked.
The Cradle tray / menu-bar icon changes to match.
Your teammates see the new state on the team screen.

If it doesn't work

My presence changes back to something else on its own. That's the automatic settings doing their job. If it's switching to Idle when you don't want it to, set Automatically set me to away after to Never.
I'm logged in on two computers and my presence keeps changing. Cradle uses one presence per account, so two computers fight each other. Quit Cradle on the computer you're not using.
I set myself to Busy but I'm still getting calls. Direct calls and transfers from teammates can still come through. Only the automatic routing from Cradle is blocked by Busy. Turn on Decline all calls if you want those declined too. See How does presence work? for the difference.
I went back to Available without touching anything. You set Busy or Away for a length of time, and the time is up. Pick Until I change it if you'd rather switch back yourself.

Setting your status