JP2002108782A - Electronic mail device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To collectively arrange mutually related mails from received mails. SOLUTION: In transmitting the electronic mail, group ID as identification information of the mail, which is obtained by a group ID control part 26, is allocated to the header of the mail generated by a mail generation processing part 30 with input by an input part 22. When the mail is transferred and returned, group ID allocated to the mail is not changed. When the mail to which group ID is allocated is received, a header analysis part 38 analyzes the header and a group ID classifying part 40 classifies the mails whose group ID is matched as a group. A non-opening/opening classifying part 42 classifies the groups based on group ID into the group including the mail which is not opened and the group which does not include the mail that is not opened and a classified result is displayed on an output part 44.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail device, and more particularly, to an electronic mail device for classifying received mail into a plurality of groups.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional electronic mail apparatus, as a method of organizing received mails, a method of organizing received mails by using a subject or a sender as a key has been proposed. In this apparatus, the subject and the sender of the matching mail are grouped together to organize the mail so that the recipient of the mail can read the mail easily. In addition, in order to organize unread emails from a large amount of emails, it has been proposed to classify received emails into unopened emails and opened emails. This eliminates the hassle of searching for unread mail while scrolling through the mail display screen.

[0003]

However, in such a device, since the relevance of a plurality of mails is not considered, even if the mails are arranged based on the subject, sender, and unopened of the mail, the relevance of the mails is not considered. The user has to read the mail to judge whether the mail has the certainty or not, and it is not always convenient for the recipient.

An object of the electronic mail device of the present invention is to collectively arrange mutually related mails. Another object of the electronic mail device of the present invention is to arrange unopened mails together with related opened mails.

[0005]

The electronic mail device of the present invention employs the following means to achieve at least a part of the above object.

An electronic mail device according to the present invention comprises: an identification information allocating means for allocating identification information to a mail; a mail transmitting means for transmitting the mail together with the identification information when the identification information is allocated to the mail; The gist of the present invention is to include a mail receiving unit that receives the mail together with the identification information when the information is assigned, and a classification unit that classifies the mail received by the mail receiving unit based on the identification information.

In the electronic mail apparatus according to the present invention, the mail transmitting means transfers or replies the mail together with the identification information when the mail is assigned identification information when the mail is transferred or returned. It can be.

Further, in the electronic mail device of the present invention,
The classification means may be means for classifying mail into groups for each piece of identification information.

In the electronic mail apparatus according to the aspect of the present invention, a group including at least one unopened mail among the groups to which the mail classified by the classification unit belongs is regarded as an unread group, and a group not including the unopened mail. May be provided as a read group.

[0010]

Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to examples. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an outline of a configuration of an e-mail system 10 including an e-mail device 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention as functional blocks, and FIG. 2 is an e-mail system according to an embodiment of the present invention. Device 20
FIG. 2 is a hardware configuration diagram schematically showing the hardware configuration of FIG. As shown in FIG. 1, the e-mail system 10 includes a plurality of e-mail devices 20 for sending and receiving e-mails, a network 12 connected to the plurality of e-mail devices 20 via a line 14, and an e-mail system 10 connected to the network 12. Mail server 16.

The electronic mail device 20 acquires from the group ID storage unit 28 a group ID as unique identification information capable of identifying the mail input by the input unit 22 via the user interface unit 24 and updates the group ID. A control unit 26, a mail creation processing unit 30 that assigns the group ID obtained by the group ID control unit 26 to the header of the mail and performs a mail creation process for sending the mail, and a line 14 (for example, a telephone line or the like) ) And a mail transmission / reception unit 32 that transmits a mail to another e-mail device 20 via the network 12 (for example, the Internet or a LAN) and receives a mail transmitted by the other e-mail device 20; Reads out the received mail stored in the mailbox 36 by A header analyzer 38 for analyzing header information such as a group ID assigned to the header of the received mail and the opening status of the received mail, and a group ID classification for classifying the received mail based on the analysis result of the group ID by the header analyzer 38 An open / unopened classifying unit 42 for classifying whether the received mail has been opened / unopened based on the analysis result of the opened state of the received mail by the header analyzing unit 38.
And the group ID classification unit 40 and the unopened classification unit 4
And an output unit 44 that outputs the classification result by the user interface 2 via the user interface unit 24. It should be noted that the mail box 36 stores all the received mails regardless of whether they have been opened. The received mail stored in the mail box 36 can be sorted using the date and time of the mail, the address of the sender, the subject, and the like as keys, similarly to ordinary mail software. It is to be remembered.

The mail created by the mail creation processing section 30 is composed of a text and header information. This header information is “Date” indicating the date and time of sending the mail.
"From" to indicate the sender and "Subject" to indicate the title
In addition to normal header information such as “ct”, “To” indicating a destination, and “Cc” indicating a destination other than the destination, “G” indicating a group ID as unique identification information for identifying a mail.
group ID "and" Status "indicating a read / unread flag as opening information indicating whether or not the mail has been opened. The read / unread flag is changed from unread to read when the operator opens the received mail stored in the mailbox 36.

The hardware configuration of the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment is configured as a microprocessor with a CPU 52 at the center as shown in FIG. This CPU5
2, a main memory 54, a cache memory 56, a cache controller 58 for controlling the main memory 54, a graphics controller 62 connected to a CRT 60, a keyboard 64 and a mouse 66.
, An input / output interface 74 connected to a floppy (registered trademark) drive device 70 or a hard disk 72, and a serial port 7 connected to the line 14 via a modem 76.
8 are connected. As described above, the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment has the same configuration as a general-purpose computer. The electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment is realized by integrating such hardware and the above-mentioned software.

Next, the operation of the electronic mail apparatus 20 of the embodiment configured as described above will be described. First, an operation of assigning identification information to a mail by the electronic mail device 20 and transmitting the mail will be described. FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an example of a mail transmission processing routine executed by the CPU 52 of the electronic mail device 20 according to the embodiment. This routine is executed when the operator activates mail software stored in a storage device such as the hard disk 72 and instructs creation of a mail using an input device such as the mouse 66.

When the mail transmission processing routine is executed,
First, the CPU 52 of the e-mail device 20 executes a process of determining whether or not the mail creation is new (step S100). If the creation of the mail is new, the group ID stored in the group ID storage unit 28 is obtained (step S102) and the obtained group ID is obtained.
Is assigned to the mail (step S10).
4). This process is a process of acquiring unique identification information for identifying a mail and assigning it to the header of the mail. In the embodiment, an identification number (for example, an identification number) stored as the identification information in the group ID storage unit 28 is used. 0001 or 0
010, etc.) and read this identification number together with the address of the sender as “Group I”
D ". Here, the reason why the address of the transmission source is assigned together with the identification number is so that the mail can be completely identified regardless of the transmission source.

Next, the group ID currently stored in the group ID storage unit 28, that is, the group ID obtained in step S104 is updated, and the updated group I
A process of storing D in the group ID storage unit 28 is performed.
(Step S106). This process is a process for assigning a different group ID each time a mail is created. In the embodiment, the identification number as the identification information for identifying the above-described mail is updated by incrementing the identification number (for example, the identification number 0010 is changed to 0011), and the incremented identification number is stored in the group ID storage unit 28. And

If the creation of the mail is not new in step S100, that is, if the mail is to be transferred or returned, the process of acquiring the above-described group ID and assigning it to the header of the mail is not performed, and the mail is the transfer source. Group ID assigned to the email or the email from which you reply
Will be forwarded or replied as is. In this way, by matching the identification information of the forwarded mail or the reply mail with the identification information of the mail to be transferred or the mail to be returned, the mails can be associated with each other.

When the group ID is assigned to the mail, an item for creating the mail is input (step S108), and a process of waiting for an instruction as to whether or not to transmit the mail generated based on the input is performed. (Step S110). This processing is performed for items for creating a mail, for example, the destination “To” and the destination “C” other than the destination.
c) to display a display screen for inputting a title, “Subject”, a text, etc. on the CRT 60, and to wait for an input to be completed by an operation of the keyboard 64, the mouse 66, etc. and for an instruction to send an e-mail. Become. When an e-mail transmission instruction is given, the input destination "To"
And send an e-mail to the destination "Cc" other than the destination
(Step S112) This routine ends.

Next, an operation of classifying received mails based on a group ID will be described. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an example of a received mail processing routine executed by the CPU 52 of the electronic mail device 20. This routine is executed when the operator activates the mail software stored in the hard disk 72 or the like and instructs the received mail to be classified based on the group ID (for example, C
This is executed when a button (not shown) for categorizing the received mail displayed on the RT 60 is clicked with the mouse 66).

When the received mail processing routine is executed,
First, the CPU 52 of the electronic mail device 20 determines whether or not the received mail stored in the mailbox 36 is empty (step S200). Here, the condition that the received mail stored in the mailbox 36 is empty means that the mail has never been received in the past, or that all the mails received in the past are stored in the mailbox 36.
This means that no received mail has been stored in the mailbox 36 after being deleted from the inside. If it is determined that no received mail is stored in the mailbox 36, it is determined that there is no received mail to be processed, and this routine is terminated without doing anything. On the other hand, mailbox 3
6, it is determined that the received mail is stored in “Gro” of the header information of all the stored received mails.
read out the group ID set in "upID"
(Step S202) The received mail is sorted using the group ID as a key (step S20).
4). This process is a process of classifying received mails having the same group ID as a group.
In the embodiment, if it is assumed that the above-mentioned sender address and identification number are set as the group ID in “GroupID” of the header information, the received mails are sorted in alphabetical order of the sender addresses, and Received mails with the same address are sorted in the order of identification numbers. As a result, received mails having the same sender address and identification number can be arranged so as to be adjacent to each other, and these mails can be classified into a group. Thereafter, the result of sorting the received mails based on the group ID is stored in the mailbox 36 (step S205).

When the received mail is sorted based on the group ID in this way, the read / unread flag set in “Status” of the received mail header information is read for each group ID (step S206). Based on the read unread flag, it is determined whether there is at least one unopened received mail among the received mails whose group IDs match (step S20).
8). If it is determined that there is an unopened received mail,
The read / unread flag of the received mail having the same group ID is set to unread (step S210). This is because when sorting unread mails by classifying received mails as read read mails and unread unread mails, unread mails and related read mails (read mails with the same group ID, For example, read mails with the same sender address and identification number) are grouped together as an unread group, and mutually related mails (mails with the same group ID) that do not include unread mails are grouped together as a read group. This is done to make it possible. If it is determined that there is no unopened received mail,
The read unread flag is not set. The setting of the read unread flag to unread is performed for classifying a read group and an unread group, which will be described later, and the unread flag stored in the mailbox 36 is changed. Not something. Thus, all group IDs
Until the processing of the read / unread flag of the received mail is completed (step S212), steps S206 to S21 are performed.
0 is repeated, and when the processing of the read / unread flag is completed, the processing of classifying the received mail arranged for each group ID into an unread group and a read group using the read / unread flag as a key is performed (step S214). ), The result of this classification is stored in the mailbox 36 (step S215), and a process of displaying the result on the CRT 60 is performed (step S216), and this routine ends.

FIG. 5 shows an example of the classification of the received mail based on the group ID and the read / unread flag. In FIG. 5, for ease of explanation, the group ID (in the embodiment, the address and the identification number of the transmission source) is represented by a numeral. Assuming that the received mails in the mailbox 36 are stored in the order shown in FIG. 5A, the received mails are classified based on the group IDs assigned to the respective received mails. Since they are sorted in order, the result is as shown in FIG. Next, when the received mails are classified based on the read unread flags, first, if there is an unread mail among the received mails belonging to the same group ID, all the read unread flags of the received mails belonging to the same group ID become unread. 5B, the subject B, the subject b, and the subject Fw: D
Is set from read to unread. And since it is classified into an unread group and a read group based on the read / unread flag set in each received mail,
As shown in FIG. 5C, the subject B to the subject E are classified as unread groups, and the subject A and the subject C are classified as read groups.

The embodiments of the present invention have been described with reference to the embodiments. However, the present invention is not limited to these embodiments, and various embodiments may be made without departing from the gist of the present invention. Of course, it can be carried out.

For example, in the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment, only when a new mail is created, the mail is added to the group I.
D is assigned, but if a group ID is not assigned to the received mail, the group ID may be assigned at the time of replying or forwarding the mail.

In the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment,
Although the group ID is set by the address of the transmission source and the identification number, any identification method may be used as long as the mail can be identified. For example, the group ID may be set based on the address of the transmission source and the date and time of transmission.

Further, in the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment,
Although the group ID is automatically assigned to the mail when the operator creates a new mail, the group ID may be arbitrarily assigned by the operator. Step S204 in FIG. 4 when the operator has not assigned a group ID.
It is assumed that the received mail to which the group ID is assigned is sorted by priority, and the received mail to which the group ID is assigned and the received mail to which the group ID is not assigned are sorted.
In addition, it is also possible to receive a normal mail by another mail software in which “Group ID” of the header information is not set, and in this case, in the process of step S204 in FIG. 4, no group ID is assigned. The received mail to which the group ID is assigned is sorted by priority. Further, the same group ID may be assigned to a plurality of mails by the operation of the operator, whereby a plurality of mails determined to be related by the operator can be arranged as a group.

In the electronic mail device 20 of the embodiment,
After the received mail is classified into groups based on the group ID, the received mail is further classified into a read group and an unread group. However, the received mail may not be classified into a read group and an unread group.

[0028]

The e-mail device 2 of the present invention described above.
According to 0, identification information for identifying the mail is assigned to the mail, so that the received mail can be organized based on the identification information.

Also, when forwarding or replying to a received mail, the identification information assigned to the received mail is not changed, so that a plurality of mails can be associated with each other, and the related mails can be arranged as a group. Can be. In addition, since the group ID as identification information is assigned to the “Group ID” of the header information of the mail, the recipient of this mail is notified of the title “Sub”
Even if the “ject” is rewritten and returned or forwarded, the group ID is not changed, and the received mails related to each other can be more appropriately arranged as a group.

Further, if there is an unread mail among the received mails included in the group, all the mails included in the group are classified into a read group and an unread group on the assumption that they are unread, It is possible to organize read mails related to the URL together.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an electronic mail device 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an outline of a configuration of an e-mail system 10 including functional blocks.

FIG. 2 is an electronic mail device 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram illustrating a hardware configuration of the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an example of a mail transmission processing routine executed by a CPU 52 of the electronic mail device 20.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an example of a received mail processing routine executed by a CPU 52 of the electronic mail device 20;

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of classification of received mail.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 e-mail systems, 12 networks, 14
Line, 16 mail server, 20 e-mail devices,
22 input unit, 24 user interface unit, 26
Group ID control unit, 28 Group ID storage unit, 30
Mail creation processing unit, 32 mail transmission / reception unit, 36 mailbox, 38 header analysis unit, 40 group I
D classification section, 42 unopened classification section, 44 output section, 5
0 bus, 52 CPU, 54 main memory, 56
Cache memory, 58 Cache controller, 6
0 CRT, 62 graphics controller, 64
Keyboard, 66 mouse, 68 keyboard interface, 70 floppy drive, 72 hard disk, 74 input / output interface, 76 modem,
78 Serial port.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. An identification information allocating means for allocating identification information to a mail, a mail transmitting means for transmitting the mail together with the identification information when the identification information is allocated to the mail, and the identification information being allocated to the mail. An e-mail device comprising: a mail receiving unit that sometimes receives the mail together with the identification information; and a classifying unit that classifies the mail received by the mail receiving unit based on the identification information. 2. The electronic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said mail transmitting means transfers or replies the mail together with the identification information when the mail is assigned identification information when the mail is transferred or returned. Mail device. 3. The electronic mail device according to claim 1, wherein the classifying unit is a unit that classifies the mail into groups for each piece of identification information. 4. A group that includes at least one unopened mail among the groups to which the mails classified by the classifying unit belong, as an unread group, and a group that does not include unopened mails as a read group. 4. The electronic mail device according to claim 3, further comprising means.