Below you can see some screenshots of Ryan's In/Out Board. They show Ryan's In/Out board with various options enabled/disabled. The first three are shown with the departments feature dsiabled by config setting. Colours, column layouts and names etc. can all be changed in the config file - no HTML knowledge required.
Ryan's In/Out Board works by simply clicking the name (or whichever columns you set in the config) of the person whose status you want to change. At the bottom you can see the simple form which users can use to add (default or their own) comments to their status.

You can hide the header part as shown below.
Note also how the colours have been changed here and the column arrangement differs.
Note how the header has been hidden altogether here.
You can sort by any field simply by clicking the field title.
Default sort field can be changed in the config file.

This is done using either drop down at the top or bottom of the board.
Department names can be chnaged as well as what you prefer to call the departments (teams, groups etc.)