JPH05308378A - Electronic mail address setting system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a coordinate table which is superior in flexibility and maintainability by preparing hierarchic coordinate tables and their utilizing method. CONSTITUTION:A coordinate table 11 that all electronic mail users can refer to, coordinate tables 12, 13, and 14 that groups A, B, and C can refer to, and coordinate tables that the individuals possess are prepared. When an electronic mail is generated, a user selects an alias for an electronic mail destination address to be set from a range 16 which can be referred to and sets it. Before the electronic mail is sent, a developing routine develops the user sets the alias for the destination by using the tables 15 and 12, table 11, and tables in higher layers in order, and when it is all developed into electronic mail addresses, the main is sent.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail address setting method used in an electronic mail system.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In an electronic mail system in a conventional distributed processing system, a correspondence table of an electronic mail address and an alias corresponding to the electronic mail address is in the form of being owned by each individual or having a correspondence table at each host for transfer. It was

For example, UNIX (an operating system name developed by AT & T Bell Laboratories) mail delivery system sendmail has a correspondence table in a file / etc / aliases, and an alias of an e-mail address set by a user is a formal e-mail. Expand to address. This correspondence table is managed by the host administrator.

In UNIX, each general user reads and composes a mail by using MH (Message Handling: system name developed by B. Borden et al. Of Rand Co. of Santa Monica) which is a mail reader system. , You can also write a correspondence table of email addresses and aliases in a file called .mh_aliases.

[0005]

However, when a plurality of tenants, such as a large-scale intelligent building, move in and exchange e-mails using a common LAN, the correspondence table between the entire building and the private ownership is provided. Inconvenience occurs if only the correspondence table is owned by the owner or owned by the individual.

[0006] For example, in the case of the entire building and only in case of private ownership, if the personnel section exists in the tenant A and the tenant B, the personnel section will coexist when registered in the ownership database of the entire building. Therefore, the personnel section is simply registered. Personnel Section (Tenant B), Personnel Section (Tenant A)
It must be written like this. In addition, this is not desirable in terms of security because it will inform other tenants of the company's organizational structure.

However, it takes time and labor for all users to register such an alias commonly used in the same tenant in the privately owned correspondence table, because each person owns the same data. It is also inefficient in terms of resources.

Next, if there is only a correspondence table for each tenant and for each person, an alias commonly used for the entire building cannot be set. After all, it is inefficient to set each tenant and individual.

In view of the above problems, the present invention provides a correspondence table database of e-mail addresses and aliases excellent in security, flexibility, and maintainability by preparing a multi-layer correspondence table and a method of using the same. To aim.

[0010]

In order to achieve this object, the present invention provides an electronic mail address and its alias, that is, an electronic mail which is often composed of the corresponding actual person name and organization name so that the user can easily handle the electronic mail. The correspondence table with the character string associated with the address is owned by each individual, the centralized management that all users can refer to, and the ownership management is performed for each group to which the user belongs, and only from the users who belong to the group. At least three of them are provided so that they can be referred to, and each of them is provided with a plurality of hierarchies in a format in which an upper level can be referred to.

[0011]

According to the present invention, in the above structure, the corresponding table manager of a certain layer can refer to the alias of the upper layer and perform grouping, aliasing for the alias, etc. according to the request to the managed table. Various settings are possible, such as registering aliases that may be referenced in a common table that can be referenced by other organizations, and registering in a table that cannot be referenced by other organizations when it is not preferable for security or operation reasons. Therefore, maintenance is facilitated by the management of each table by an administrator according to each layer.

[0012]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In this embodiment, MHS mail (CCITT X.400 series, ISO, which is an international standard for e-mail, is used.
An example of an electronic mail system based on the protocol standard of 10021 series) is given.

FIG. 1 shows the case of three hierarchies. The table of the highest group is 11, the tables of groups A, B and C belonging to the highest group are 12, 13 respectively.
14 is the table of the individual A belonging to the lowest level group A. In FIG. 1, 16 ranges are the ranges that the user A can refer to.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an electronic mail system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The received mail BOX 209 is a storage area for temporarily storing the file of the transferred electronic mail.

The outgoing mail box 210 is a storage area for temporarily storing a file to be transferred to another system.

The electronic mail system main body 203 uses the interface unit 201 to handle the work of the user to create an electronic mail.
Support via e-mail, copy created e-mail to outgoing mail BOX 210 and transfer it to the destination, receive e-mail addressed to yourself by receiving mail BOX 209
It is read from the user and displayed to the user via the interface unit 1.

The address alias reference / expansion unit 202 supports the work of referring to the alias of the e-mail address prepared when the user sets the destination during creation of the e-mail message, and sends the created e-mail. At this time, the alias set as the destination is expanded into a formal e-mail address according to the algorithm shown in FIG. 3, and is passed to the e-mail system. In addition, the address alias reference / expansion unit uses the privately owned correspondence table file 2 when referring or expanding an alias.
07, or requests the common possessed alias correspondence table DB 208 to be searched through the DB client unit 204.

The DB client unit 204 requests the DB server unit 205 for expansion and reference, receives the result, and passes it to the address alias reference and expansion unit 202.

The DB server unit 205 receives a request from each client, receives information about a user who has accessed from the user information DB 206, searches a common tenant-owned alias correspondence table based on the information, and sends the result to the client. hand over.

The interface unit 201 supports the work of displaying and composing an electronic mail by the user using a window system or the like.

Next, a procedure for expanding an alias set as an e-mail transmission destination into an e-mail address will be described with reference to the processing flowchart of FIG. 3 and the table examples of FIGS. First, it is searched whether or not the alias received as the expansion target is registered in the personally owned correspondence table as shown in FIG. Now, if you receive the alias string "boss", this will be expanded from the contents of the personally owned correspondence table into two aliases, "sales manager" and "sales manager". Furthermore, these two aliases are registered in the personally owned table. 4, it is not registered in the example in Fig. 4, so the tenant name of the user is received next and the deployment is attempted using the corresponding table owned by the tenant. The tenant of the user who requested the deployment is tenant A. Figure 5 if there is
A row in which the owner column is tenant A is searched and "Sales Manager" is expanded to "Jiro Kato" and "Sales Manager" is expanded to "Saburo Tanaka". Even if the column of the alias of the tenant A is searched, it can be understood that it cannot be expanded any more. Therefore, the table of the common ownership is searched next. From Figure 5, "Jiro Kato" is "G =
Jiro; S = Kato; O = TA; P = SINA; A = JTT; C = JP "in" Saburo Tanaka "
It can be seen that is expanded to the email address "G = Saburo; S = Tanaka; O = TA; P = SINA; A = JTT; C = JP". Now that all the aliases have been expanded to the e-mail address, the process ends.

[0022]

As described above, according to the present invention, the corresponding table administrator of a certain layer can refer to the alias of the upper layer and perform grouping, aliasing for the alias, etc. according to the request to the managed table. Therefore, aliases that may be referenced by other organizations are registered in a common table that can be referenced by other organizations, and when referencing is not preferable for security or operation, it is registered in a table that cannot be referenced by other organizations. Various settings are possible.

Further, since the management of each table is performed by the administrator corresponding to each layer, the maintenance is facilitated, and it becomes possible to set the e-mail alias excellent in security, flexibility and maintainability.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a multi-layer table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of an electronic mail system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of address alias expansion processing in a multi-layer table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of a personally owned alias correspondence table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a common / tenant-owned alias correspondence table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of sign]

 11 Correspondence table common to all 12 Correspondence table owned by group A 13 Correspondence table owned by group B 14 Correspondence table owned by group C 15 Correspondence table owned by user A 16 Range that user A belonging to group A can refer to 201 Interface unit 202 Address alias reference and expansion unit 203 E-mail system 204 DB client unit 205 DB server unit 206 User information DB 207 Personally owned alias correspondence DB 208 Common, tenant owned alias correspondence DB 209 Incoming mail BOX 210 Outgoing mail BOX

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A first correspondence table provided for each user, which is composed of an electronic mail address and an alias, and a second correspondence table composed of an electronic mail address and an alias, which can be referred to by all users. , An electronic mail address setting method provided with a third correspondence table that is provided for each group to which the user belongs and that can be referenced only by users who belong to the group and that is composed of electronic mail addresses and aliases ..