E-MAIL MESSAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• US 20090254624A1
• Filed: 04/08/2009
• Published: 10/08/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Jean-Francois Ducorroz, Jeff Baudin
• Original Assignee: Jean-Francois Ducorroz, Jeff Baudin
• Inventors: BAUDIN, JEFF, DUCORROZ, JEAN-FRANCOIS
• Application Number:
  US12/420,667
• Publication Number:
  US 20090254624A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/234 for tracking messages

Abstract

An e-mail program having a message deferment feature for postponing the time for taking action on incoming mail message until a specified future time, an auto-filing feature, a find similar feature, a message tokenizing features, and a suggest reply feature.

Claims

1. An e-mail message management system having an Inbox and a message deferment feature for postponing the time for taking action on incoming mail message until a specified future time, thereby reducing clutter in said Inbox, wherein said deferment features removes selected messages in said Inbox and places the removed messages in a deferred message mailbox where they remain until a predetermined deferment time expires, and when the deferment time expires the deferred messages are automatically moved back to the Inbox and marked as unread.

2. The e-mail system of claim 1, wherein message deferments feature may be cancelled at any time by the user, wherein when a deferment is cancelled, any messages acted on by the message deferment feature are moved to the Inbox.

3. The e-mail system of claim 1, wherein messages that have been deferred by said deferment feature are marked graphically to indicate the number of times they have been deferred.

4. The e-mail system of claim 1, wherein for IMAP accounts, message deferment information is stored in a special folder on an IMAP server, wherein e-mail clients on remote computers sharing the same IMAP account will be notified of message deferment actions.

5. A method for deferring taking action on e-mails received in an e-mail program Inbox, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving an e-mail message in a receiving e-mail Inbox;

(b) electing to defer taking action on the received e-mail;

(c) selecting a deferment time;

(d) updating the received e-mail message deferment time field in the e-mail program database;

(e) incrementing the received e-mail message deferment count in the e-mail program; and

(f) moving the received message from the Inbox to a Deferred mailbox;

6. The method of claim 5, further including the steps of:

(g) identifying whether the e-mail account is an Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) account; and

(h) creating a defer command message and saving it in a special IMAP client synchronization mailbox which identifies the message being deferred, the message'"'"'s deferment time and its updated deferment count.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein if the account is identified as not an IMAP account, then steps (g) and (h) are bypassed.

8. The method of claim 5, further including the step of:

(I) manually cancelling the deferment on a previously deferred message by selecting the message in the Deferred mailbox;

(j) clearing in the database the deferment time for the selected message; and

(k) moving the selected message to Inbox.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein when the e-mail account is an IMAP account, the method includes the further steps of:

(l) creating a cancel deferment command message and saving it in the IMAP client synchronization mailbox, which identifies the message whose deferment is being cancelled and includes the message'"'"'s updated deferment count.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein wen the e-mail account is not an IMAP account, step

(l) is bypassed.

11. The method of claim 5, further including the step of

(m) periodically checking the deferment times of messages stored in the Deferred mailbox using a background task;

(n) bringing a deferred message to the user'"'"'s attention when its deferment time expires.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein when a message deferment time expires, the method includes the following further steps:

(o) marking the message as unread;

(p) clearing the database of the deferment time for the expired field in the e-mail program database; and

(q) moving the message to the Inbox.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein when the e-mail account is an IMAP account, the method includes the further following steps:

(r) creating a clear-deferment command message and saving it in the IMAP client synchronization mailbox, which identifies the message with a deferment being cleared, and includes an updated deferment count for the message.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein when the e-mail account is not an IMAP account, step (r) is bypassed.

15. The method of claim 5, further including step of:

(s) processing remote commands for any IMAP accounts of the e-mail program.

16. The method of claim 5, further including the step of:

(t) using an auto-filing task to automatically suggest folders to which a user may wish to file an e-mail message.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the auto-filing task of step (t) includes the following sub-steps:

(t1) automatically filing incoming e-mail messages based on a discernible pattern of categorization;

(t2) learning over time the user'"'"'s filing habits by statistically analyzing the messages in the user'"'"'s folders;

(t3) analyzing incoming messages to determine which category or categories to which they most likely belong; and

(t4) suggesting folders corresponding to the categories identified in step (t3).

18. The method of claim 17, wherein step (t2) includes the step of processing auto-file commands, including learn, relearn, unlearn, and classify.

19. The method of claim 17, further including the step of:

(t5) rechecking existing messages for correct classifications.

20. The method of claim 17, including the further steps of:

(u) checking to see if the command queue contains an auto-filing command;

(v) if the result of step (u) is yes and a message has been copied to a mailbox, then sending a learn command to the auto-filing task;

(w) performing a statistical analysis on the message; and

(x) adding the results of step (w) to a corpus data file corresponding to the mailbox in which the message was copied.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein if the result of step (u) is no and the received message was moved from one mailbox to another, the method includes the steps of:

(y) sending a relearn command to the auto-filing task;

(z) performing a statistical analysis on the message; and

(aa) adding the results of step (z) to the corpus data file corresponding to the destination mailbox;

(bb) removing the results from the corpus data file corresponding to the source mailbox.

22. The method of claim 17, wherein when a user wishes to forget about a message, the following further steps are included:

(cc) sending an unlearn command to the auto-filing task.

(dd) performing a statistical analysis on the message; and

(ee) removing the results of step (dd) from the corpus data file corresponding to the mailbox.

23. The method of claim 17, wherein when the user wants to know how to auto-file a message, the method employs the following additional steps:

(ff) sending a classify command to the auto-filing task when the client wants to know how a message should be auto-filed;

(gg) performing a statistical analysis on the message;

(hh) comparing the results of step (gg) to the data stored in the various corpus data files; and

(ii) returning a list of the closest matching mailboxes to the requesting task.

24. The method of claim 5, further including the step of:

(jj) finding messages similar to the source message.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein step (jj) bases its similarity findings on the occurrence of common words that appear in the bodies of the messages.

26. The method of claim 24, further including the step of:

listing messages found in step (jj) for quick viewing.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein messages found to be similar to a source message is selected as a new source message and step (jj) is repeated for the newly selected source message.

28. The method of claim 5, further including the step of:

(kk) removing references to a message it is selected or deleted; and

(ll) removing the message tokens from the tokens database.

29. The method of claim 5, further including the step of:

(mm) automatically suggesting reply text for a specified message.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein step (mm) suggests reply text based on a user'"'"'s past reply history.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein when a message is selected for Auto-Reply suggestions, the e-mail program performs the following additional steps:

(nn) finding a list of messages similar to the one being replied to;

(oo) looking for replies the user made previously to the messages located in step (nn); and

(pp) presenting a list of the most likely reply candidates to the user.