Use of a bulk-email filter within a system for classifying messages for urgency or importance

• US 20040039786A1
• Filed: 06/30/2003
• Published: 02/26/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 03/16/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Horvitz, Eric J., Apacible, Johnson T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,565,403 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/207
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/404 characterised by control arrangements for compensation, e.g. for backlash, overshoot, tool offset, tool wear, temperature, machine construction errors, load, inertia G05B19/19, G05B19/41 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/04 Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/214 using selective forwarding
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/226 Delivery according to priorities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/61 taking into account QoS or priority requirements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/62 Establishing a time schedule for servicing the requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/63 Routing a service request depending on the request content or context
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and method to facilitate efficient and automated processing of messages. A bulk filter is provided to categorize one or more received messages according to a range of classification, the range spanning from at least a bulk classification of values to at least a non-bulk classification of values. A second filter is provided to further classify the received messages in order to automatically facilitate processing of the messages. The range of classification includes a continuum of values based on a likelihood that the received messages are determined to tend toward or fall within the bulk classification of values or toward/within the non-bulk classification of values. Also, the bulk filter or filters can include an adjustable threshold setting to determine or define differences between the bulk classifications and the non-bulk classifications. Various combinations of filters are possible including multiple filter arrangements, parallel arrangements, cascaded arrangements, and other arrangements to facilitate filtering and sorting of messages in order that users can more efficiently process such information in a timely manner. Applications include the enhancement of classification procedures for identifying urgent or important email from non-urgent or non-important email, with the combination of bulk-email filters with urgency or importance filters in cascaded and parallel filtering methodologies.

Claims

1. A system that filters received messages, comprising:

a bulk filter to categorize one or more received messages according to a range of classification, the range spanning from at least a bulk classification of values to at least a non-bulk classification of values; and

at least a second filter to further classify the received messages in order to automatically facilitate processing of the messages.

2. The system of claim 1, the range of classification includes a continuum of values based on a likelihood that the received messages are determined to tend toward the bulk classification of values or toward the non-bulk classification of values.

4. The system of claim 1, the messages include at least one of an email and a voice encoded text file.

5. The system of claim 1, the second filter is an urgency filter that is employed to assign urgency scores.

6. The system of claim 5, the urgency filter employs a utility model that assigns an expected cost of delayed review for urgent and non-urgent messages.

7. The system of claim 1, at least one of the bulk filter and the second filter examine new messages and annotate the messages with an urgency value, represented in an urgency field, and a likelihood value of bulk email, represented in a bulk email field.

8. The system of claim 7, further comprising a policy component that includes policies or rules for considering inferences relating to message urgency and/or bulk considerations.

9. The system of claim 8, the rules or policies are employed by the policy component to reassign bulk messages of a higher than threshold likelihood of being bulk into a folder for later review.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising reassigning remaining email that are classified by urgency in another folder.

11. The system of claim 1, the bulk filter employs an expected urgency computation followed by a weighting computation to determine whether messages are bulk.

12. The system of claim 11, the expected urgency is computed as a function, f(p(urgent|E1 . . . En),p(bulk email|E1 . . . En)), wherein f is a function, p is a probability, and E is evidence relating to urgency or whether a message is bulk.

13. The system of claim 12, the expected urgency is computed as:

14. The system of claim 12, bulk messages are determined as:

15. The system of claim 1, bulk filter computes a bulk score or discretized states of the bulk score, as an direct input to the second filter forming a cascaded filter.

16. The system of claim 1, further comprising a user interface having at least one of threshold settings, training settings, and bypass settings for interacting with the bulk filter and the second filter.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising a header analyzer to automatically remove consideration of some messages from the bulk filter.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising marking messages as an internal to invoke a bypass mechanism.

19. The system of claim 1, further comprising a component to compute an initial value determination following by a time dependent cost function.

21. A computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for implementing at least one of the bulk filter and the second filter of claim 1.

3. The system of claim 3, the bulk filter further comprises an adjustable threshold setting to determine differences between the bulk classification if values and the non-bulk classification of values.

22. A system that facilitates message filtering, comprising:

means for automatically determining a message score for a bulk mailing message; and

means for filtering the message based upon the score and a predetermined threshold.

23. A method that facilitates message processing, comprising:

employing a first filter to determine a bulk message score for a message;

employing a second filter to determine an urgency score for the message; and

sorting the bulk message from other messages based upon at least one of the bulk message score and the urgency score.

24. The method of claim 23, further comprising employing an adjustable threshold to facilitate the sorting.

25. The method of claim 23, further comprising employing one or more classifiers to perform at least one of the first filter and the second filter.

26. The method of claim 23, further comprising bypassing at least one of the filters to enable sorting the bulk message from other messages.

27. The method of claim 23, further comprising employing at least one of a parallel combination of filters and a serial combination of filters to enable sorting of the bulk message from the other messages.

28. The method of claim 23, further comprising performing a weighting operation to determine the bulk message score.

29. The method of claim 23, further comprising utilizing an importance classifier followed by an urgency classifier to categorize bulk messages.

30. The method of claim 23, further comprising utilizing an initial value filter followed by a time dependent cost filter.

31. A method that facilitates message processing, comprising:

employing a first filter to determine a bulk message score for a message;

employing a second filter to determine an importance score for the message; and

sorting the bulk message from other messages based upon at least one of the bulk message score and the importance score.

32. The method of claim 31, further comprising employing an urgency filter to sort messages that have been determined to be important.

33. A computer readable medium having a data structure stored thereon, comprising:

a first data field describing an electronic message;

a second data field describing a bulk score for the electronic message; and

a third data field describing an urgency score for the electronic message.