JPS6030244A - Electronic mailing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform easily and efficiently electronic mail service to a terminal equipment by controlling the linkage of respective piece of message information on media when the pieces of message information plural media are sent out to the terminal equipment. CONSTITUTION:When a message consisting of plural piece of message information on plural media, i.e. composite mail is sent out to the terminal equipment, the pieces of message information are separated by the media, e.g. telephone, facsimile equipment, and data terminal, and pointers alpha, beta, gamma... are added to relative pieces of message information A, B, C... among different media; and those pointers are used to register and control linkage information on the media as shown by a memory structure 24. The pieces of message information on the media are made relative under linkage control, so the properties of the media are utilized effectively to offer the electronic mail service.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to an e-mail device that can effectively service a terminal device with a message composed of message information of a plurality of media.

[Technical background of the invention and its problems]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Recently, electronic mail is being considered in which message information in various media such as voice, image, electronic code, etc. is stored in a mail device and the message information is provided to various terminal devices. This type of e-mail is highly practical, as it makes it possible to provide a wide range of information services by effectively utilizing the exchange network, for example.

However, with the recent development of information processing technology and the miniaturization and increase in capacity of storage devices, attempts have been made to store and manage messages and information from various media in a unified manner using one e-mail device. It is being Furthermore, it has been considered to configure one message from a plurality of pieces of message information that effectively utilizes the properties of a plurality of media.

In this case, the linkage of message information of multiple media that constitute one message.

In other words, it is necessary to manage the relevance before providing the email service.

However, with conventional mail devices, for example, as shown in Figure 1, the user who uses the device is assigned an ID in the terminal device @.
Message information is simply registered and managed by classifying it by number, or message information is registered and managed for each user according to the terminal device used, as shown in Figure 2. It's just that. For this reason, the first
According to the management form shown in the figure, it is necessary to manage message information for each medium, and there is a problem in that it is difficult to find linkages between these media. Furthermore, although the management format shown in FIG. 2 allows unified management of message information on a plurality of media, there is still a problem in that it is difficult to find linkages between media. In particular, when accessing message information on one medium, it is difficult to simultaneously access related message information on other media.

[Purpose of the invention]

The present invention has been made in consideration of these circumstances, and its purpose is to effectively manage the linkage of each message information of a plurality of media, and to easily provide e-mail services to terminal devices. An object of the present invention is to provide a highly practical e-mail device that can be used efficiently.

[Summary of the invention]

The present invention registers message information for a terminal device by linkage management for each medium to which the message information belongs, and when one message for the terminal device is composed of message information of a plurality of media, these message information The system processes the linkage information between the media and provides the registered message information to the terminal equipment according to the managed linkage information.

〔Effect of the invention〕

Thus, according to the present invention, linkages to message information are managed for each medium, and linkages between media of a message constituted by message information of a plurality of media are managed, so that these managed linkages According to the information, it becomes possible to effectively service the message information to the terminal equipment. In other words, great effects can be achieved, such as being able to easily and effectively provide mutually related message information regardless of the differences in media.

[Embodiments of the invention]

Hereinafter, one practical example of the present invention will be explained with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 3 is a schematic configuration diagram of an exchange network equipped with an e-mail device according to an embodiment. This exchange network is constructed by connecting various terminal devices such as a telephone 2, a display terminal 3, a facsimile machine 4, and a composite media terminal 5 to the exchange 1. The telephone 2 is an information terminal that uses voice as a medium, and the display terminal 3 is a terminal that displays characters and image information provided by media such as electronic codes on a display screen. The facsimile device 4 is a terminal that displays facsimile data on recording paper. These terminal devices receive message information from the sound mail device 6 belonging to that medium.

The mail device 6 connected to the exchange 1 is equipped with a reputation interface 11 for voice media, a facsimile interface 12 for facsimile media, a data interface 13 for electronic code media, etc., and is capable of digitally converting different information on these media. It is handled uniformly by converting it into data. Under the control of the CPUJ 4, the mail device 6 stores and manages the message of each glaze media in the memory 15 and the linkage information for the new message, and also energizes the disk controller 16 to connect the message to the disk device Noah. The message information is registered respectively.

In the mail device 6 configured in this manner, linkage information for a plurality of registered message information is obtained from the memory 15, and mail service is performed according to this linkage information, for example, as shown in FIG. ing. That is, when message information of media consisting of, for example, voice message information is accessed, i
j J According to the linkage information, it is checked whether there is message information on other media related to the message information of the audio media, such as facsimile media or character display (CD) media, and the result is used as the accessed audio. The information is sent to the terminal device via the media. After that, the terminal device receives this notification and accesses other media as necessary.
The message information of each of these accessed media is read from the linkage information and hence the disk device 17, and the message information of each of these media is provided as a service. Incidentally, when a message is composed of message information of a plurality of media, the mail device 6, when accessing one of the media,
Message information of other media may be simultaneously served according to the linkage information. In this way, the linkage information for servicing a message consisting of message information of a plurality of media, that is, a composite mail, is managed as follows.

FIG. 5 shows an example of this, in which message information for terminal equipment is separated by media to which it belongs, for example, by telephone, facsimile, and media handled by data terminals, and linkage management is performed for each. In Figure 5,
2 no.

22.23 is the message information A for each of these media.
, B, C, . . ., I, II, III, . . . are managed and registered. Among these, message information A, B, and C that are related between multiple different media.
For ..., I-inter α.

β, γ... are attached, and these? Inter α, β.

γ...All parameters include the message information A,
Linkage information between media B, C, . . . is registered and managed as shown in a memory structure 24.

The message information whose linkage is taken at pointer α is
Here, it is indicated by message information A for each medium, and from the contents of the memory structure 24, address 1 in the memory structure 2 for audio media, memory structure 22 for facsimile media, etc.
It is shown that they are registered at address 4 in the memory structure 23 of the data terminal medium, and address 3 in the memory structure 23 of the data terminal medium.

In this way, the linkage of message information is managed for each medium and registered in the memory configurations 21, 22, 23, and the linkage information between the media of a plurality of message information constituting one message is registered and managed in the memory configuration 24. By doing so, it becomes possible to easily and effectively establish linkage between each media.

Moreover, no matter which media is the first target of access,
Message information related between different media can be quickly found from linkage information between commonly managed media. Therefore, even if a message is composed of multiple pieces of message information on different media,
Free access from any media allows these message information to be easily and effectively serviced. In addition, it is possible to effectively utilize the properties of multiple mailboxes to construct high-quality messages, and since the mail management is well-organized, it is possible to provide a simple and highly efficient e-mail service. Become.

By the way, the linkage management described in ii) may be performed as follows. Figure 6 shows an example of this.26.
27 and 28 show a memory structure in which linkage management and registration of message information corresponding to each medium are performed. These memory structures 26, 27.2
8 is message information A and B belonging to that medium.

C..., 1. While registering I[, Ill...,
Regarding the message information A, B e C...
When having message information related to other media,
The registration address of the corresponding message information in the memory structure of another medium is stored as linkage information. In this example, the audio media memory structure 2
Regarding the message information A registered in 6, the linkage information ``4'' and ``3'' indicates that the message information by facsimile media exists at address 4 of memory structure 27, and the message information by data terminal media exists at address 2803 of memory structure. It is made known that information exists.

Also, another memory structure 27''.

Similarly, the linkage information is given from 28 as well. In this way, even if linkage information between media is distributed and managed for each memory structure of each medium, the same effect as in the case of centralized management described above can be achieved.

As explained above, the device of the present invention not only manages and registers the linkage of message information for each medium, but also manages the linkage information between the media of the message information to provide a mail service for the message information. Able to provide efficient services. Moreover, since linkage management allows message information to be related between media, it is possible to provide high-quality e-mail services that effectively utilize the properties of each media, and it is possible to control the management and control of the messages. Since the form is simple, great effects such as high practicality can be achieved.

It should be noted that the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments.

For example, the type and number of media constituting one message may be determined according to the specifications of the message. Furthermore, the format of the linkage information to be managed is not particularly limited. In short, the present invention can be implemented with various modifications without departing from the gist thereof.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

1 and 2 are diagrams schematically showing conventional message information management formats, and FIG. 3 is a schematic configuration diagram of an exchange network equipped with an e-mail device according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a service processing procedure for message information, and FIGS. 5 and 6 are diagrams each schematically showing a management form of message information and its linkage information according to different embodiments of the present invention. 1... Switchboard, 2.3, 4.5... Terminal equipment, 6.
...Mail device, 11.12.13...Interface, 14...CPU, 15...Memo +), 16.
...disk controller, 17...disk it,
21.22,23,24,26,27.28...Memory structure

Claims (1)

[Claims] means for linkage managing and registering message information for a terminal device for each medium to which the message information belongs; An electronic mail device comprising means for managing linkage information between the plurality of media, and means for serving the registered message information to the terminal device according to the managed linkage information.