In my company, we agree on certain subject macros for articles, news and similar non work related messages. Each of us creates his own Outlook 2007 Rules to move those to specialized folders.
The drawback of this is that new messages that get moved to other folders than Inbox do not have the desktop alert:
You do not know whether you got a new message or not.
This might be OK for messages flagged [fun], but as I have been in the company for long, I used to have folders for each of my complete projects messages in case I get a maintenance message or so. The project I work on right now has its own mailing list, so, I move its messages to a dedicated folder. I cannot afford missing instant note of an email in the project I work actively on right now!!
If you face a similar situation, it has an easy fix to get the desktop alerts for all the messages you need it for. Actually it’s no more than creating another Outlook folder :).
Let’s see how easy it can go:
Start by going to Tools-> Rules and Alerts …
Then click “New Rule…”
Make your selection as below and click “Next”
See if you need to apply this to only certain messages, typically just click “Next”
You may get a confirmation message. Just click “Yes”.
The last step is to select “Display Desktop Alert” and click “Finish” and "OK" to next messages.
Hope this helps anybody in similar situation.