System and method for soliciting and retrieving a complete email thread

• US 7,720,921 B2
• Filed: 08/27/2007
• Issued: 05/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/27/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: O'Sullivan, Patrick J., Heidloff, Niklas, Kumar, Shruti, O'Brien, Michael R.
• Primary Examiner(s): BOUTAH, ALINA A
• Application Number:
  US11/845,255
• Publication Number:
  US 20090063636A1
• Time in Patent Office: 995 Days
• Field of Search: 709/206, 709/204, 715/846, 715/744
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/08 Annexed information, e.g. attachments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/216 Handling conversation history, e.g. grouping of messages in sessions or threads

Abstract

A system and method allows an email user to solicit an email thread from another user (or from a server) in situations where the first requesting user may have been added to an email thread after the email thread was started, or in situations where the user may have an incomplete thread (for example, where a user is being added to a thread where an attachment was removed). The complete thread is returned to the first requesting user, after permission has been sought and granted, and after data mining and intelligent aggregation of a plurality of relevant threads in to one interleaved result is performed and returned to the first requesting user.

Claims

1. A method, for use in a system where users exchange emails to create an email thread, for requesting and retrieving a complete email thread, the method comprising:

receiving a request for an email thread from a requesting email user;

authenticating the requesting email user;

retrieving the requested email thread for the requesting email user;

conveying the requested email thread to the inbox of the requesting email user;

removing the requested email thread from the user'"'"'s inbox in response to receiving a suppress thread request from the requesting user via a suppress thread UI button; and

adding the requesting user to an incomplete email thread, the adding comprising;

receiving, from the requesting user, identification of another user on the incomplete email thread;

receiving a thread request for the incomplete email thread from the requesting user via a request thread UI button;

conveying the incomplete email thread to the requesting user; and

conveying the thread request for the incomplete email thread to others in the incomplete thread.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising allowing the others in the incomplete thread to review the incomplete thread and select one of “

I agree”

, “

I agree with comments”

, “

I decline”

, “

I decline with comments”

, “

Ignore”

, and “

Return the complete thread”

.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising receiving an agreement with comments response from at least one of the others in the incomplete thread and, in response to the receiving of the agreement, mining data on a mail server and parsing out the complete thread to the requesting user'"'"'s inbox.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the mining includes mining data from all available parent and child threads of the incomplete thread.