An instant messaging application intelligently infers a user's
unavailability from one or more indicia which include the user's
electronic calendar. Preferably, the instant messaging application may
report not only that a user is unavailable, but also give a reason for
inferring unavailability, in order to provide other users with additional
potentially useful information. Preferably, the user may specify which
indicia and which parameters may be used to infer his unavailability in
an editable profile. When another user requests status, this value is
returned by the server. An intelligent instant messaging application as
described herein provides other users with more accurate and complete
availability information.