Couldn't the background colour turn into red behind the name when you have messages waiting?
As well as I would have some kind of little red/purple/blue dot in front of the names that are logged in and active. Today it is a very lot of jumping between different pages to see if I can find a person active...
Another thing would be that the dot turns yellow after 20 minutes of activity and gray after 40 minutes and then automatically logged out after one hour...
