Dynamically Track Issues with a Lotus Notes 6 Shared Mailbox

Question

How can a team with access to a shared Lotus Notus 6 mailbox keep track of issues from an operations management perspective, without (heavily) using Note's folders?

Folders, if they synchronized correctly in Notes 6, would be great to keep track of which state of the process pipeline each issue is at (one folder per pipeline stage - top level folders). Each issue usually has multiple subject conversations (second level folders). Issues can (should) easily jump from one team member to another (rename the issue's folder).

Example:

• A01: Type A Tasks, In Progress
  • User Support Documentation Correction [Member2]
• A02: Type A Tasks, Complete
  • Reorganize Document Structure [Member1]

Lotus Notes 6 is not able to synchronize Lotus Notes folders (the hierarchy and names) just by refreshing, each team member must restart the desktop application; reopening the mailbox tab is also not enough. Moving folders around all day is time consuming as each team member would have to be constantly restart the Lotus Notes application to have the latest hierarchy.

Categories are only for Calendar and ToDo items (the team doesn't have a shared calendar or ToDos). What I'm really looking for is an e-mail Tagging feature. I've just seen that in an e-mail's "Document Properties" there is a Keywords field, is there a way to create customized views on keywords?

Upgrading or changing platform is not currently an option.

Answer 1

Categories are for any document for any database. You just need to create a view that uses the category field.

Since you are using a shared mailbox, you can add the category field to the design of the Inbox folder (as a column). New folders will automatically inherit the design of the Inbox, thereby having the custom category field. There is also an agent that updates all folders to match the Inbox, which would copy your new category to existing folders.