Using colors to help organize your Inbox in Notes 6
I've been using Notes 6 since Pre-release 1 came out in February, and one of the features that I've found most helpful is the ability to color-code messages based on who sent them. For instance, I've set up my preferences so that all of the emails from my boss are colored green, any email from people in my group is yellow, and email from other people in my company is pink. This makes it easy to quickly look at my Inbox and see how many messages are from the people I work with and easily open and read them.

There are a couple of gotchas with this feature, though. First, you have to be using a Notes 6 client, and your mail file must inherit its design from a Notes 6 Mail Template (in my case, StdR6Mail). Second, if you're using a Notes 6 client and opening your mail database residing on a Domino R5 or earlier server, the colors will not work. You have to be either using a Notes 6 client to read your mail file on a Domino 6 server or be using your Notes 6 client to read a local replica of your mail file. I've been using the latter option, which was a little bit of a change after having gotten used to accessing my mail file on the server directly for a long time. I've actually found that this system helps me be more productive, though, since it not only helps to visually organize my messages better but also to check email on a scheduled basis rather than every time a new message pops into my Inbox.

Okay, now that you know the gotchas, here is how to set up your mail file to color-code emails based on the name of the sender:

Open your Inbox folder, go to the action bar and select Preferences from the Tools menu. Select the Colors tab. You can then select up to three color groups to help organize your mail. You can choose both the background color and the text color for the emails. One other thing to note is that group names are not supported.