JPH0433439A - Electronic mail system with time limit setting function - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To inform an electronic mail setting time limit to a recipient in an easily understandable way and in a prescribed display system by providing a time limit information discrimination means and a mail display control means to the system. CONSTITUTION:When time limit information is set, a time limit information discrimination section 19 compares time limit information with a current time by a timer 16 and discriminates whether or not the time limit comes based on the result of comparison. When the result of discrimination is given from the time limit information discrimination section 19 to a mail display section 13, the mail display section 13 displays a time limit mark onto a mail window when the time limit comes. Then an item name of the mail, a name of a sender and a transmission time or the like are displayed. Thus, an electronic mail whose time limit is set is informed to a recipient in an easily understandable way and in a prescribed display system.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention] [Industrial application field]

The present invention relates to an e-mail system in a network environment.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, the structure of an e-mail includes items such as sending time, e-mail subject, sender's name, destination, and body.In the display of the e-mail inbox directory, the subject, sender, date and time are included. The contents of such items are displayed. If you receive a lot of e-mails, please make sure that the recipients do not read them.
There are times when I remain for a long time. If there is a deadline or deadline for the content communicated via e-mail, the recipient may miss the deadline. To prevent this from happening, senders have devised ways to alert recipients by displaying the due date or deadline in the email subject line. e.g. email subject line

[Meeting Notice]
with the date [October 4th] added to the subject line.

They had devised a way to make the announcement as [Meeting Notice (October 4th)].

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

Even with such efforts, the way each sender is displayed is different, and if a large number of e-mails have been received, identification may become difficult and important e-mails may be overlooked even when they are due. There was a problem that the The present invention has been made to solve these problems, and allows the sender of an e-mail to set a time limit in a fixed manner, and the receiver can receive e-mail with a fixed time limit. The objective is to provide an e-mail system that can provide information in an easy-to-understand manner using a display format.

[Means to solve the problem] The e-mail system of the present invention includes a time limit information determining means that attaches the time limit information to the e-mail in a predetermined format and compares the time limit information with time information of an internal clock to determine whether the e-mail has reached the time limit; The present invention is equipped with a mail display 'M control means for identifying and displaying e-mails whose time limit has expired based on the time limit. [Effect]

The e-mail data format (structure) includes time limit information,
On the sending side, the sender can set time limit information on the e-mail to be sent. The time limit information includes information such as whether or not there is a time limit, and if there is a time limit, the date and time limit. On the receiving side, the time limit information determining means compares the time limit information with the time information of the internal clock to determine whether the e-mail has reached its time limit. For emails for which the sender has set time limit information,
When displaying a list of received e-mails by the e-mail display control means, an identification mark is attached to display the e-mails so that the recipient can easily understand them.

【Example】

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 3 shows an example of the system configuration for realizing the e-mail system of the present invention, and FIG. 1 shows the configuration of an embodiment of the part related to receiving and displaying mail according to the present invention in the work scene in FIG. 3. FIG. As shown in FIG. 3, a network 31 is connected to work stage machines 32 and 33 equipped with a coordinate indicating device 36, a keyboard 37, a display device R1138, etc., and a time server 34 having time information. An e-mail system is configured by connecting to a mail server 35 that temporarily stores e-mails sent from the selected work stage until the recipient reads them. Each work scene is displayed on a display device 1 as shown in FIG.
1. Display control circuit 12 that controls the display of the display device @ 11; Mail display control section 1 that controls the time limit information in e-mail to be displayed with good identifiability according to the present invention.
3. A mail box 14 that holds the received e-mail 15, a timer 16 that keeps track of the current time, a communication control unit 17 that controls communication with the network 38, and time information of the received e-mail and time information of the timer 16. It has a time limit information determining section 19 that compares and determines which emails have reached their time limit. The e-mail data 21 of this embodiment has information in the format (structure) as shown in FIG. That is, the mail data 21 includes an attribute code 22S transmission time 23, time limit information 24 set by the sender according to the content of the e-mail, a subject 25 corresponding to the title of the e-mail,
It consists of a sender's name 26, an address list 27, and a body 28. A feature of the present invention is the addition of a new item of time limit information 24 that can be set arbitrarily by the sender. The operation of the embodiment of the present invention having the above configuration will be explained. Each of the work scenes 32 and 33 reads the time from the time server 34 at the time of startup, and sets the time in the timer 16 in each of the four work stages shown in FIG. When sending an e-mail, create and edit an e-mail including time limit information settings according to the flow shown in Fig. 6 at work stage 1's Create E-mail to Send - M East (not shown). , control the sending of created emails. First, the mail sheet 41 for transmission shown in FIG. 4 is displayed on the display device @11 on the work stage (step (61).
Sender name input field 42, subject input field 43, function button 44
, an address entry field 45, a time limit information setting field 46, a mail text input field 47, a time limit setting button 48, and the like. The unique feature of the present invention is that it has a time limit information setting field 46 and a time limit setting button 48. The sender inputs necessary items into each column on the sending mail sheet 41 using the coordinate input box 36 or the keyboard 37. It is monitored whether the send button of the function buttons 44 of the sending mail sheet 41 has been selected, that is, whether there has been a sending instruction (step 62). When a transmission instruction is received, it is determined whether all necessary information has been entered in each column of the mail sheet 41 (step 63). If there are still fields left unfilled,
Edit the sending mail sheet 41 (step 6)
4). If there is no transmission instruction in step 62 and if editing processing is performed in step 64, it is determined whether there is an instruction for time limit information, that is, whether the time limit setting button 48 is set to "with time limit" ( Step 65). If it is determined in step 65 that there is no time limit information instruction, the process moves to step 62. When it is determined that there is an instruction for time limit information, the sender is prompted to set the time limit information field 46, and the time limit information field is set. Once the settings have been made, the process moves to step 62 (step 66). If it is determined in step 64 that the mail sheet editing process has been completed, an e-mail is sent (step 67). As described above, the e-mail is edited and generated using the mail sheet (1. It is sent. The sent e-mail is sent via the network 31.
It is stored in the part of the mail server 35 that corresponds to the addressee. E-mails stored in the mail server 35 are transferred to the mail box 14 by the communication control unit 17 inside the work stage 1 shown in FIG. 1 when the user issues a reading instruction from the work stage 1. The received mail is sent to the mail display control unit 13, and a list of received mail is displayed in a mail window 51 as shown in FIG. When displaying the time limit information, the time limit information determination unit 19 compares the time limit information 24 of the e-mail as shown in FIG. Is displayed. The e-mail display operation briefly explained above is shown in detail in the flowchart of FIG. That is, first, the received mail window 51 is displayed on the display device 111 under the control of the mail display control section I3 (step 71). As shown in FIG. 5, this received mail window 51 displays a list of the subject, sender, date and time of the e-mail 15 in the mailbox 14, and also displays a time limit mark 52 and an unopened mark 53 to the left of the subject. It looks like this. There are also function buttons at the top, including a "New Mail" button that instructs you to import newly received mail. When the user (recipient) clicks the "New Mail" button in the mail window 51 and instructs to retrieve the mail, the e-mail system uses the communication control unit 17 to retrieve the mail from the mail server 35 to the mailbox 14 (steps 72 and 73). ). The mail display control unit 13 displays the mails in the mailbox 14 one by one (1), but in order to know whether there are any remaining mails that should be displayed, it checks whether there are any undisplayed mails. (Step 74). If there is an undisplayed email in the mailbox, the time limit information determination unit 19 takes out one undisplayed email, reads this email management information (Step 75), and sets the time limit information. (Step 76). If time limit information is set, time limit information determination section 19
compares the time limit information with the current time of the timer 16 (step 77). Based on the comparison result, it is determined whether the time limit has expired or not (step 78). As for the time limit, it may be determined that the time limit has come when a predetermined period (hour) has elapsed, such as within 10 days before the due date. The determination result from the time limit information determination unit 19 is displayed on the email display unit 13.
When the time limit is reached, the mail display section 13 displays a time limit mark 52 on the mail window 51 (
Step 79). If the time limit information has not been set as determined in step 76, and if it is determined in step 78 that the time limit has not come, it is determined whether the content of the email has already been read (step 80). . If the document has not been read, an unopened mark is displayed (step 81). Next, the subject, sender's name, sending time, etc. of the email are displayed (step 82). When the display processing of one undisplayed mail in the mail box is completed through the above steps, the process returns to step 74 and the display processing of the next undisplayed mail is performed. Then, the process of displaying undisplayed mails one by one is repeated until there are no undisplayed mails left in the mail box 15, and when there are no undisplayed mails left, the process is terminated.

【Effect of the invention】

According to the present invention, the data format of an e-mail is set so that the sender can set time limit information, and the receiver side identifies the e-mail whose time limit has come based on the time limit information, and the receiver sets the time limit. By displaying received e-mails in an easy-to-understand format, it is possible to avoid mistakes such as overlooking the expiration date of a received e-mail and opening it late.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1st f! FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of a mail display function portion in an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of the data format of an e-mail according to the present invention. FIG. 3 is a system configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a display example of a mail sheet. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a mail window having a mail display function. FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the processing on the e-mail sending side. Figure i7 is a flowchart showing the processing on the e-mail receiving side. 11...Display device, 12...Display control circuit, 13.
...Mail display control circuit, 14...Mail, 15.
... Received mail, 16... Timer, 17... Communication control unit, 18... Network, 19... Time limit information determination unit.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] Time limit information determining means for determining whether an email has reached a time limit by comparing time limit information added to an email in a predetermined format with time information of an internal clock; An e-mail system with a time limit setting function, comprising a mail display control means for identifying and displaying incoming e-mails.