Generation and use of an email frequent word list

• US 9,165,056 B2
• Filed: 06/19/2008
• Issued: 10/20/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Consul, Ashish, Gorti, Suryanarayana Murty, Goodsell, Andrew E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Pham, Khanh
• Assistant Examiner(s): HARPER, ELIYAH STONE
• Application Number:
  US12/142,622
• Publication Number:
  US 20090319483A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,679 Days
• Field of Search: 707/826, 707/726, 707/769
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/31 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/42 Mailbox-related aspects, e.g. synchronisation of mailboxes

Abstract

Technologies are described herein for generating a mailbox specific frequent word list associated with a mailbox. In one method, an index scan is performed on catalogs to retrieve search data mapping words to emails containing the words. The search data is provided across multiple mailboxes. A universal frequent word list is generated based on the search data. The mailbox specific frequent word list is generated based on the universal frequent word list.

Claims

1. A method for generating a mailbox specific frequent word list associated with a mailbox, comprising:

performing an index scan on catalogs to retrieve search data mapping words to emails containing the words, the search data provided across multiple mailboxes, the search data comprising an inverted index mapping each of the words to one or more email identifiers identifying each of the emails that contain each of the words;

generating a universal frequent word list of the emails based on the search data, the universal frequent word list comprising the words contained in the search data and a word frequency associated with each of the words across the multiple mailboxes; and

generating a plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists based on the universal frequent word list, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists corresponding to one of the multiple mailboxes, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists comprising words contained in emails of the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes and a frequency that the words appear in the emails of the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes, wherein performing the index scan comprises

receiving, from an external application, a request for at least one mailbox specific frequent word list of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists,

upon receiving the request, determining whether the universal frequent word list has been created,

upon determining that the universal frequent word list has not been created, performing the index scan on catalogs to retrieve search data mapping words to emails containing the words,

upon determining that the universal frequent word list has been created, determining whether the universal frequent word list is current,

upon determining that the universal frequent word list is not current, performing the index scan on catalogs to retrieve search data mapping words to emails containing the words, and

upon determining that the universal frequent word list is current, proceeding directly to generating the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists based on the universal frequent word list by filtering the words and the corresponding word frequencies associated with the mailbox.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating a universal frequent word list based on the search data comprises:

determining the word frequency associated with each of the words by counting a number of emails that contain each of the words; and

generating the universal frequent word list by mapping each of the words to the associated word frequency.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the word frequency comprises a ratio between the number of emails in the mailboxes that contain each of the words and a total number of emails in the mailboxes.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein frequent word list for the mailbox is stored as a compressed folder associated item (“

FAI”

).

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the catalogs comprise a global catalog created and maintained by an email server across multiple domains.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application comprises an advertising application, and wherein the method further comprises generating, via the advertising application, tailored advertising based on at least one of the mailbox specific frequent word lists.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application comprises a voice transcription application, and wherein the method further comprises adding, via the voice transcription application, at least a portion of the words in at least one of the mailbox specific frequent word lists to a transcription dictionary of the voice transcription application, the transcription dictionary adapted to provide a vocabulary enabling the voice transcription application to phonetically map audio sequences to words in the transcription dictionary.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application comprises an organization application, and wherein the method further comprises generating, via the organization application, email tags based on at least one of the mailbox specific frequent word lists, the email tags adapted to associate searchable categories to the emails.

9. A method for generating a mailbox specific frequent word list associated with a mailbox, comprising:

receiving, from an external application, a request for the mailbox specific frequent word list from a plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists;

upon receiving the request, determining whether a universal frequent word list has been created, the universal frequent word list comprising a mapping of words to corresponding word frequencies across multiple mailboxes;

upon determining that the universal frequent word list has been created, determining whether the universal frequent word list is current;

upon determining that the universal frequent word list is not current, performing an index scan on a global catalog to retrieve an inverted index mapping words to email identifiers corresponding to the emails containing the words; and

upon determining that the universal frequent word list is current, proceeding directly to generating the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists based on the universal frequent word list by filtering the words contained in emails associated with the mailbox and the corresponding word frequencies associated with the mailbox;

upon determining that the universal frequent word list has not been created, performing the index scan on the global catalog to retrieve the inverted index mapping each of the words to the email identifiers corresponding to the emails containing the words;

generating the universal frequent word list of the emails based on the inverted index; and

generating the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists based on the universal frequent word list by filtering the words and the corresponding word frequencies associated with the mailbox, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists corresponding to one of the multiple mailboxes, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists comprising words contained in the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes and the word frequencies that the words appear in the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein receiving, from an external application, a request for the mailbox specific frequent word list from a plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists comprises receiving the request for the mailbox specific frequent word list through an application programming interface.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the request specifies a minimum value or a maximum value of the word frequencies associated with the words included in the mailbox specific frequent word list.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the request specifies a number of words included in the mailbox specific frequent word list.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the mailbox specific frequent word list is sorted according to the word frequencies.

14. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a computer-readable storage medium having instructions executable by the processor stored thereon, which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to provide an application programming interface (“

API”

) for generating a mailbox specific frequent word list associated with a mailbox, the API comprising;

a first object adapted to receive, from an external caller application, a request for the mailbox specific frequent word list from a plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists, upon receiving the request, determine whether the universal frequent word list has been created;

a second object adapted to

upon determining that the universal frequent word list has not been created, determine whether the universal frequent word list is current, and

upon determining that the universal frequent word list is not current, perform an index scan on a global catalog to retrieve an inverted index mapping words to one or more email identifiers identifying each of the emails that contain each of the words;

a third object adapted to generate a universal frequent word list of the emails based on the inverted index, the universal frequent word list of the emails comprising a mapping of the words to corresponding word frequencies across multiple mailboxes, each of the word frequencies specifying a number of emails that contain one of the words;

a fourth object adapted to, upon determining that the universal frequent word list is current, generate the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists based on the universal frequent word list by filtering the words contained in emails associated with the mailbox and the corresponding word frequencies associated with the mailbox, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists corresponding to one of the multiple mailboxes, each of the plurality of mailbox specific frequent word lists comprising words contained in the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes and the word frequencies that the words appear in the emails of the corresponding one of the multiple mailboxes; and

a fifth object adapted to transmit the mailbox specific frequent word list to the external caller application in response to the first object receiving the request.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the external caller application comprises an advertising application adapted to generate tailored advertising based on the mailbox specific frequent word list.

16. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the external caller application comprises a voice transcription application adapted to add at least a portion of the words in the mailbox specific frequent word list to a transcription dictionary, the transcription dictionary adapted to provide a vocabulary enabling the voice transcription application to phonetically map audio sequences to words in the transcription dictionary.