Method and System for Email Messaging

• US 20070294428A1
• Filed: 06/19/2006
• Published: 12/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Guy, Ido, Mizrachi, Boaz, Soroka, Vladimir
• Application Number:
  US11/424,889
• Publication Number:
  US 20070294428A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/245
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

A method and system for preventing sending of messages to incorrect email recipients are provided. The method includes determining (120) the intended recipients of an email message prior to sending and comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups (126, 122). Potential errors in the intended recipients are identified and a prompt (125) is provided to amend the intended recipients. The prompt (125) provides a suggestion to replace, add or remove an intended recipient. The defined recipient groups include one or more of groups of recipients formed from an organization data structure (122), groups of recipients defined by a user, and groups of recipients (126) mined from one or more user'"'"'s previous email correspondence.

Claims

1. A method for email messaging, comprising:

determining the intended recipients of an email message prior to sending, wherein there are two or more intended recipients;

comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups; and

providing a prompt to amend the intended recipients.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, including:

identifying a potential error in the intended recipients compared to the defined recipient groups.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups uses a similarity measure to identify a potential error.

4. The method as claimed in claim 2, including comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups defined for a sender of the email message.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, including:

identifying one or more of the defined groups which include the intended recipients, and providing a prompt to complete the list of intended recipients in accordance with an identified defined group.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein providing a prompt to amend the intended recipients provides a suggestion to replace, add or remove an intended recipient.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the defined recipient groups include one or more of groups of recipients formed from an organization data structure, groups of recipients defined by a user, and groups of recipients mined from one or more user'"'"'s previous email correspondence.

8. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein an organization data structure defines a Boolean value for each pair of an individual in an organization and a group indicating the likelihood of the individual sending a message to the group.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, including comparing the pair of the sender of the email message and the group of intended recipients with the Boolean value for the pair to identify a potential error.

10. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein groups of recipients are mined from one or more user'"'"'s previous email correspondence and ranked by the strength of the group.

11. The method as claimed in claim 10, wherein a group is defined as the set of the sender of a previous email message and the recipients of the message, and a ranking is applied to the defined groups according to the number of messages and/or the date of the messages.

12. The method as claimed in claim 10, wherein groups are defined by:

building a graph with vertices of individuals who are senders and/or recipients of previous email messages joined by edges between individuals who correspond; and

determining groups with many edges connecting vertices of a group and few edges between groups.

13. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein identifying a potential error in the intended recipients includes identifying a mismatch between the sender and the intended recipients according to an organization data structure.

14. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein identifying a potential error in the intended recipients includes identifying a mismatch between the intended recipients and a defined recipient group.

15. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein providing a prompt to amend the intended recipients suggests moving intended recipients from a “

to”

addressee list to a blind carbon copy (“

bcc”

) addressee list.

16. A computer program product stored on a computer readable storage medium, comprising computer readable program code means for performing the steps of:

determining the intended recipients of an email message prior to sending, wherein there are two or more intended recipients;

comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups; and

providing a prompt to amend the intended recipients.

17. A system for email messaging comprising:

a data structure of defined recipient groups;

an agent including;

means for determining the intended recipients of an email message prior to sending, wherein there are two or more intended recipients; and

means for comparing the intended recipients to the defined recipient groups; and

a prompt means on a graphical user interface to generate a prompt to amend the intended recipients.

18. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the agent includes means for identifying a potential error in the intended recipients.

19. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the agent includes means for identifying one or more of the defined groups which includes the intended recipients, and the prompt means generates a prompt to complete the list of intended recipients in accordance with an identified defined group.

20. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the agent is provided as part of an email client application in which the email message is created.

21. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the agent is provided by a server over a network to an email client application in which the email message is created.

22. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the data structure of predefined recipient groups is an organization data structure.

23. The system as claimed in claim 17, wherein the data structure of predefined recipient groups stores recipient groups mined from one or more user'"'"'s previous email correspondence.

24. A method of providing a service to a customer over a network, the service comprising the method steps of:

determining the intended recipients of an email message prior to sending, wherein there are two or more intended recipients;

comparing the intended recipients to defined recipient groups; and

providing a prompt to amend the intended recipients.

25. A method for email messaging, comprising:

determining the number of intended recipients of an email message prior to sending;

determining if the number of intended recipients exceeds a predefined threshold number;

if the number of intended recipients exceeds the threshold number, providing a prompt to transfer the intended recipients to blind carbon copy (“

bcc”

) addressees.

26. The method as claimed in claim 25, wherein the intended recipients are separate “

to”

or carbon copy (“

cc”

) addressees.

27. The method as claimed in claim 25, including automatically transferring addressees from “

to” and

/or carbon copy (“

cc”

) addressees following a user response to the prompt.