KR100194575B1 - Operation method of multi-agent based e-mail system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for operating a multi-agent-based e-mail system, in order to solve the problem that the e-mail service in the prior art through the contact of urgent matters or cooperation with other communication media is difficult, Includes application agents and coordinating agents in the server's main memory, user interface agents in the client's main memory, delivers urgent e-mail, delivers e-mail based on the recipient's circumstances, and An e-mail arrival status monitoring process for monitoring whether the received e-mail is urgent or important to the recipient, so as to cooperate closely with the means; A situation determination process of the receiver, which determines the situation of the receiver when the email arrives; A delivery means selection process of selecting a delivery means based on the information on the contact information according to the situation of the receiver; An e-mail delivery process of converting the necessary media by the selected communication means and contact information and then transmitting a message using a telephone, a fax, a beeper, and an e-mail; And an e-mail arrival confirmation notification process that automatically responds to the sender with information about the arrival and delivery method of the e-mail sent by the user.

Description

Operation Method of Multiagent Based E-mail Service System

The present invention relates to an e-mail system, and more particularly, to a method of operating a multiagent-based e-mail system for delivering an e-mail provided on a computer network using a multiagent structure.

In recent years, with the rapid spread of the World Wide Web (WWW), computer networks have become an important infrastructure as a means of communication outside information companies in computer communication and the use of the Internet, and computer networks have been developed and settled as an infrastructure of society. . In particular, communication using e-mail is expected to evolve in various forms in the future as it has an element that anyone can communicate freely at any time, anywhere.

These e-mails are asynchronous, not real-time, like phones. Therefore, anyone can send information at a convenient time, there is an advantage that the recipient can read the e-mail at a convenient time. However, this advantage may be a disadvantage in some cases.

Here are some examples of these cases.

First, since anyone can easily send the e-mail that is not necessary from the recipient's point of view, it is difficult to manage the e-mail, a lot of time and effort is required to read.

Secondly, it is difficult for the sender to check whether the sent e-mail is properly delivered, and it is difficult to deliver an urgent situation.

Third, it is difficult to send and receive e-mail in consideration of the receiver's situation. For example, it is difficult to transmit and receive in consideration of the schedule or reception environment of the receiver.

Fourth, even in the case of urgent e-mail, the arrival of the e-mail cannot be monitored at all times, and may not be read depending on the situation.

Therefore, the current e-mail has a problem that it is difficult to e-mail service through the contact of urgent matters or cooperation with other communication media.

Accordingly, the present invention is a method for operating an e-mail system using OAA (Open Agent Architecture), which is a multi-agent structure to a server and a client connected through a network line to solve the above problems, and in particular, it is possible to replace the receiver By using an agent, an urgent e-mail delivery and an e-mail delivery in consideration of a receiver's situation are carried out, and an existing communication means is not simply integrated but is able to cooperate closely with each other.

1 is a hardware diagram of a multiagent-based email system according to the present invention.

2 is a block diagram of a multiagent-based email system according to the present invention.

3 is a general flow diagram of a multiagent-based email system in accordance with the present invention.

* Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings

10: phone 20: fax

30: beeper 40: telephone line

50: network line 100: server

110, 210: first and second main memory 111: coordination agent

112: application agent

112a to 112h: email agent, notification agent, schedule agent DB agent, voice synthesis agent, telephone agent, fax agent, and beeper agent

115: database 116: mail spool

120: telephone / fax controller 130, 230: first and second auxiliary memory

140 and 240: first and second CPUs 150 and 220: first and second network boards

200: client 211: UI agent

250: multi-modal I / O devices

Operation method of the multi-agent-based e-mail system of the present invention for achieving the above object is provided with a telephone / fax controller, an auxiliary memory, a central processing unit, a network board, and a main memory, telephone, fax, and beeper the telephone line Urgent e-mail delivery and recipient status, including servers connected through a server and clients with multimodal I / O devices, network boards, auxiliary memory, central processing units, and main memory connected via this server and network lines. In order to deliver the e-mail in consideration of the above, an application agent and coordinating agent including an e-mail agent, a notification agent, a scheduling agent DB agent, a voice synthesis agent, a telephone agent, a fax agent, and a beeper agent are included in the main memory of the server. A user interface in the client's main memory The agent, e-mail arrives to an emergency situation or to monitor important to arrive e-mail recipient, including the monitoring step; A situation determination process of the receiver, which determines the situation of the receiver when the email arrives; A delivery means selection process of selecting a delivery means based on the information on the contact information according to the situation of the receiver; An e-mail delivery process of converting the necessary media by the selected communication means and contact information and then transmitting a message using a telephone, a fax, a beeper, and an e-mail; And an e-mail arrival confirmation notification process that automatically responds to the sender with information regarding the arrival and delivery method of the e-mail transmitted by the user.

The present invention summarizes the support functions of the multi-agent-based electronic mail system as follows.

First, it monitors whether the arriving email is urgent or important to the recipient.

Secondly, when the email arrives, the receiver determines what is happening. In the situation judgment, the schedule information of the receiver is used. This gives you a rough idea of where and what the recipient is doing.

Third, depending on the recipient's situation, he selects how and where to contact based on the contact information.

Fourthly, based on the selected communication means and contact information, the media is converted into necessary media and then sent via telephone, fax, beeper or e-mail.

Fifth, it automatically responds with information about the arrival and delivery of the email sent by the sender.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a hardware diagram of a multi-agent based email system according to the present invention.

The hardware configuration of the multiagent-based e-mail system is shown in FIG. 1 as shown in FIG. 1, which includes a client portion 200 in which the user interface is raised, a server portion 100 in which the agents performing actual tasks are raised, the server and the client. It consists of a network line 50 to connect. In addition, as a support environment, a telephone 10, a fax 20, a beeper 30, aka beep, and a telephone line 40 are required.

The server portion 100 is a first storing the telephone 10, the fax 20, the telephone / fax controller 120 controlling the beeper 30, the coordination agent 111 and the application agent 112. Main memory 110, the first central processing unit 140 for controlling the performance of the multi-agent-based e-mail system support function, the first auxiliary memory 130 for storing the agent-related data and the performance results, communication with the client It consists of a first network board 150 to support.

In addition, the client part 200 may include a multi-modal I / O device 250 for supporting a user's convenient input environment, a second main memory 210 for storing a user interface (UI) agent 211, and a multi-modal support function. A second central processing unit 240 for controlling performance of all UI agent-related functions, a second auxiliary memory 230 for storing agent-related data generated based on data input from a user, and a method for supporting communication with a server It consists of two network boards 220.

The operation of a multiagent-based email system having such a configuration is as follows.

When the multimodal input (text, voice, pen gesture, mouse, keyboard) device 250 is used to request a task from the UI agent 211, the UI agent 211 analyzes this and ICL which is a communication language used by the agent. After converting to (Interagent Communication Language), it delivers to the coordination agent 111.

Accordingly, the coordination agent 111 selects an application agent 112 (to be described later in FIG. 2) which is actually performed using the meta-knowledge of its own and requests the corresponding work. The agent processes the requested content, converts the processing result into ICL, and delivers the result to the coordination agent 111. The coordination agent 111 delivers this to the UI agent 211, which the UI agent shows to the user using the multimodal output (voice, still and video, text) device 250.

2 is a block diagram of a multi-agent based e-mail system centered on the multi-agent in FIG.

As shown in FIG. 2, the multi-agent based email system includes one coordinating agent 111 and eight application agents 112a through 112h included in the first main memory 110 of the server 100. In addition, it has a dynamic structure based on a distributed environment consisting of one UI agent 211 included in the second main memory 210 in the client 200 and plug & play.

These agents are classified according to their role, and coordination agent 111 provides a location and coordination function for the exchange between the application agents.

In contrast, application agents 112a through 112h are specialized in handling the work of a particular domain. In a multi-agent based e-mail system, application agents can interact with other agents only through coordination agents for efficient control of agents.

The UI agent 211 can be mounted on a device that is independently portable and can be placed anywhere on a computer connected to a network, so that the UI agent 211 can process work while cooperating with a remote agent via a network. Therefore, the PDA or notebook PC, which is a portable device, is equipped with only the UI agent 211, and other agents having a large amount of computation and data are placed on the server side, so that the agent-based e-mail system can be used wherever a network is supported. Support services are available.

The above described application agents are described as follows.

The coordination agent 111 mediates communication between agents, assigns and manages tasks for each agent, and the email agent 112a transmits and receives emails, monitors specific emails, and informs the sender of the arrival of the emails. The notification agent 112b supports cooperation among agents in consideration of the receiver's situation, such as determining the receiver's status and selecting an appropriate contact means, and the scheduling agent 112c supports the user's schedule, current time, date, Information about the user's location, etc., the database agent 112d searches for a database in which the phone numbers, locations, positions, etc. of the employees are stored, and the speech synthesis agent 112e uses the voice synthesis for the user. Voice to the user, the phone agent 112f is delivered to the specific e-mail over the phone, the recipient confirmation using the password, etc. Then, the fax agent 112g converts the e-mail format into a fax format and then sends a fax. The beeper agent 112h notifies the arrival of a specific e-mail through the beeper.

In addition, a user interface (UI) agent 211, which is a kind of application agent, receives a multimodal input using a pen and a microphone from the user or shows information from the agent to the user.

3A and 3B are an overall flowchart of the multi-agent based email system of the present invention using the above-described multi-agent.

First, referring to FIG. 3A, a schedule and an email delivery method are set using the UI agent 211 (S1 and S2). The email agent 112A installs a trigger and monitors whether a specific (topic, sender) email arrives (S3, S4). After the e-mail arrives, the notification agent 112B is notified (S5), and the notification agent requests information about the user from the schedule agent 112c (S6). Then, the schedule agent acquires the user's information and informs the notification agent 112b (S7).

Accordingly, the notification agent requests information about the contact from the DB (Database) agent 112d. (S8)

Next, referring to FIG. 3b, the DB agent acquires information on the contact and informs the notification agent 112b (S9).

Accordingly, the type of the delivery means selected using the UI agent 211 is determined (S10).

In the case of the telephone set by this determination (S10), the notification agent 112b requests the speech synthesis agent 112e to media-convert the contents of the email (S20). After the speech synthesis agent converts the media, the speech synthesis agent delivers the converted media to the notification agent (S21).

Accordingly, the telephone agent makes a call (S22), checks if there is a corresponding user (S23, S24), and if there is a notification agent, requests the telephone agent 112f to deliver the contents of the e-mail by voice. / Fax controller 120 delivers the email to the user (S25), if not only delivers the voice message (S26).

When the fax agent is selected by the determination of the delivery selecting means (S10), the notification agent 112b requests the fax agent 112g to deliver the contents of the email by fax, and the fax agent mediates the contents of the email. After the conversion (S50), the phone / fax controller 120 delivers the e-mail to the user (that is, sent by fax) (S51).

In addition, when selecting a beeper by the determination of the delivery selecting means (S10), the notification agent requests the beeper agent 112h to notify the arrival of the e-mail, so that the beeper agent to call the fax / fax controller 120 By sending a specific code number to the user to inform the fact that the e-mail arrived (ie, beeper) (S100).

In addition, when selecting a system other than its own system by the determination of the delivery selecting means (S10) (S200), the notification agent forwards the contents of the email to the email agent 112a to a specific system. (S201). Accordingly, the email agent forwards the arrived email and delivers the email to the user (S202).

When the e-mail arrives by telephone, fax, beeper, or other system as described above, the notification agent requests the e-mail agent 112a to respond to the e-mail sender that the e-mail is delivered (S300).

Thereafter, the email agent responds to the email sender that the email has been delivered (S301).

The present invention as described above has the following effects.

First, the e-mail can be received in consideration of the various media (computer, telephone, fax, beeper) and the situation of the recipient. Thus, e-mail services are available through urgent contact or cooperation with other communication media.

Secondly, since only the UI agent is mounted on a device that is easily portable, it is possible to have a hair environment of an e-mail that can receive support services of an agent-based e-mail system wherever a network is supported.

Third, because the agent delivers the e-mail reliably according to the recipient's situation, the receiver and the sender can concentrate on their work without having to worry about the arrival of an urgent e-mail. In addition, the sender can easily know the delivery status of the e-mail because it automatically receives the response state of the e-mail.

An object of the present invention is to deliver an urgent e-mail using a multi-agent in the e-mail system, to deliver an e-mail in consideration of the recipient's situation, and to cooperate closely with various existing communication means.

Claims (3)

Multi-modal I / O device with a telephone / fax controller, auxiliary memory, central processing unit, network board, and main memory, telephone, fax, and beeper connected via telephone line, the server and network line A method of operating an e-mail system including a client having a network board, an auxiliary memory, a central processing unit, and a main memory, wherein the server is configured to deliver an urgent e-mail and e-mail in consideration of a receiver's situation. An application agent and coordinating agent including an email agent, a notification agent, a scheduling agent, a DB agent, a voice synthesis agent, a telephone agent, a fax agent, and a beeper agent in the main memory, and a user interface agent in the main memory of the client. Email that arrives, including Grade or e-mail arrives to monitor the situation and the importance of monitoring process; A situation determination process of a receiver, which determines the situation of the receiver when the email arrives; A delivery means selection process of selecting a delivery means based on the information on the contact according to the situation of the recipient; An e-mail delivery process of converting the necessary media by the selected communication means and contact information and then transmitting a message by using the telephone, a fax, a beeper, and an e-mail; And an e-mail arrival confirmation notification process that automatically responds to the sender with information about the arrival and delivery method of the e-mail transmitted by the user. The method of claim 1, wherein the situation determination of the receiver uses schedule information of the receiver. The method of claim 1, further comprising: setting a schedule and an email delivery method using the user interface agent; A second step of monitoring whether a specific email arrives by the email agent; A third step of notifying a notification agent when the email arrives; A fourth step of acquiring information of the user by the schedule agent and informing the notification agent of the information when the notification agent requests the information on the user from the schedule agent; A fifth step in which the DB agent informs the notification agent of the requested information when the notification agent requests the DB agent for information on the contact; A sixth step of determining a delivery means selected by the user through the notification agent receiving the information; If the selected delivery means is a telephone, the notification agent requests the voice synthesis agent to convert the contents of the e-mail to the notification agent after media conversion, and the notification agent sends the e-mail to the telephone agent. Requesting delivery to the user, and forwarding the email to the user via the telephone / fax controller according to the request; If the notification agent requests the fax agent to forward the e-mail to the fax when the selected delivery means is a fax, the fax agent converts the contents of the e-mail by the fax agent and then delivers the e-mail to the user through the telephone / fax controller. An eighth step; A step 9 in which the notification agent sends a specific code number to the user through the telephone / fax controller when the notification agent requests the beeper agent to notify the e-mail arrival when the selected delivery means is a beeper; ; A notification agent, when the selected delivery means is another system, requests the e-mail agent to forward the contents of the e-mail to a specific system, and forwards the e-mail arrived by the e-mail agent to deliver the e-mail to the user. Steps; And the notification agent requests the email agent to reply to the email sender of any of the telephone, fax, beeper, and other systems to the email sender. 11. An operating method of a multi-agent based e-mail system, comprising the eleventh step of responding.