JPH06250950A - Mail box management method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To automatically group-manage an electronic mail box by collating a condition as against accessory information on the electronic mail which a user previously defines with accessory information of the received mail and storing it in a peculiar mail box. CONSTITUTION:An electronic mail accessory information collation part 107 collates accessory information of the electronic mail, which is extracted in an electronic mail accessory information extraction part 104, with the distribution condition of the electronic mail extracted in a received electronic mail distribution condition extraction part 106 into the peculiar mail box. Then, a storage destination peculiar mail box specification part 108 defines the peculiar mail box coincided with the condition from the plural peculiar mail boxes in a received electronic mail distribution condition 105 which the user defines as the storage destination of the received electronic mail. Furthermore, an electronic mail distribution part 109 extracts the electronic mail arrived at a standard electronic mail box 101 and stores the electronic mail in the peculiar mail box specified by the storage destination peculiar mail box specification part 108.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to management of received electronic mail in an electronic mail system operating in a network environment, and more particularly, to systematic management by dynamic classification of received electronic mail and received electronic mail. In customizing the email management system by the user's own settings,
The present invention relates to a mailbox management method suitable for smoother operation of an electronic mail system and integration with other business systems.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as a method for managing received e-mail, "E-mail System Construction Guide" (Nikkei B
Company P 1992.5.18 PP105-106) "LANWORL
D ”,“ DaVici eMAIL ”,“ CraftM ”
As described in “ail”, the user gives the search key to the attached information such as the sender, the sending date, and the title of the received electronic mail in the mailbox owned by the user. There is a method of searching the box and displaying a list of received e-mails corresponding to the search key on the screen.In addition, the display order of the search results can be specified.

As a method of storing received e-mail, "E-mail system construction guide" (Nikkei BP
As described in "Joinus-PC" of P. 1992.5.18 P36), the list list of received e-mails is displayed on the screen, and the user saves it from the list list displayed on the screen. There is a method in which an e-mail is selected, the user specifies the storage location of the selected e-mail one by one, and the e-mail specified by the user is stored in the location specified by the user.

[0004]

In the above-mentioned prior art, the electronic mail systems "LANWAORD" and "Da" are used.
In "Visi eMAIL" and "CraftMail", management of e-mails received by the mailbox is performed by displaying a list of all e-mails existing in the mailbox on the screen, and the senders of the displayed e-mails. The user himself / herself can refer to the attached information such as the transmission date and the title, or give the attached information of the received e-mail as a search key and display the search result by the search key on the screen to refer to it. Therefore, in order to manage the e-mails existing in the mailbox, as described above, the user refers to the e-mail attached information and the attached information of the email is used as a key. It was necessary to perform operations such as searching.

In addition, the electronic mail system "Joinus"
-"PC" allows the user to specify the e-mail existing in the mailbox and the storage location of the e-mail, so that the e-mail having various attributes existing in the mailbox can be attached to the attached information. However, in this case, in order to move the email to another storage location, the user must specify the target email and the storage location of the email one by one. It was

A first object of the present invention is to provide a mailbox provided by an electronic mail system with a sender of the electronic mail when the electronic mail reaches the mailbox.
It extracts the attached information such as the transmission date and the title, and compares the attached information of the received email with the condition for the attached information of the email defined by the user in advance, By storing in the mailbox, the group management of the electronic mail is automatically performed according to the attached information of the received electronic mail.

A second object of the present invention is to make the user unique by setting and updating the condition for distributing to the user's own mailbox according to the attached information of the received electronic mail. It is to provide an environment in which the operation environment of E-mail system can be easily customized and the e-mail system can be operated more smoothly.

[0008]

According to the mailbox management method of the present invention, an electronic mail system is a standard in an electronic mail system operating in a network environment composed of a plurality of information processing devices having a computer and a dialogue terminal. User's own mailbox provided by
In addition to the standard mailbox, a plurality of user-specific mailboxes (hereinafter referred to as unique mailboxes) are provided, and condition parameters for attached information that includes at least one of the sender, sender date, and title of the received email. , And the name of the unique mailbox as a storage destination of the email satisfying the condition, is defined as a received email distribution condition, and when the email is received in the standard mailbox, the received email is By extracting the attached information from the corresponding email and comparing the extracted attached information with the attached information defined in the received email distribution condition, the received emails satisfying the above conditions are provided with the plurality of unique emails. From the boxes, identify the unique mailbox that is the storage destination of the received email, The received e-mail from the standard mail box, it is extracted and those to be stored in its own mailbox, which is the specific.

Further, for the mailbox provided by the electronic mail system, the user himself defines the condition for the attached information of the received electronic mail and the unique mailbox for the condition, and the electronic mail system provides this. It is possible to interactively edit a condition for the attached information and a unique mailbox for the condition, which are managed as a pair with the corresponding mailbox.

[0010]

According to the present invention, when an electronic mail reaches a mailbox provided by the electronic mail system, a condition for the auxiliary information of the electronic mail defined by the user in advance and a unique mailbox as the storage destination of the electronic mail are provided. And the attached information of the received e-mail, the original mailbox that is the storage destination of the e-mail is specified, and the e-mail is stored. Therefore, the mailbox provided by the e-mail system as a standard. The e-mail that arrives at can be automatically distributed to the unique mailbox defined by the user according to the conditions for attached information.

Thus, it becomes unnecessary for the user to refer to the mailbox or search by giving a search key in order to manage the received electronic mail.

By hierarchizing the unique mailbox, more detailed management of the mailbox becomes possible.

In addition, the conditions for the attached information of the electronic mail and the unique mailbox, which is the storage destination of the received electronic mail, are interactively set and updated, respectively, so that the operating environment of the electronic mail system unique to the user is set. Can be customized.

Furthermore, since the storage locations are physically separated for each unique mailbox, when using a received electronic mail from a general-purpose application such as spreadsheet software, it is easy to access the target electronic mail. Becomes

[0015]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the system according to the present invention. The standard mailbox 101 is
It is a standard mailbox provided by the e-mail system for each user, and the sent e-mail is
Stored in standard mailbox. The e-mail reception monitoring unit 102 uses the standard mailbox 10 owned by each user.
1, the presence or absence of a newly received e-mail is monitored, and if a new e-mail has arrived in the standard mailbox 101, the name of the e-mail received from the standard mailbox 101, or An ID for uniquely identifying the electronic mail is extracted by the electronic mail name extraction unit 103. The e-mail ancillary information extraction unit 104, for an e-mail having the name or ID of the e-mail extracted by the e-mail name extraction unit 103, adds the ancillary information such as the title of the e-mail, the sender, and the transmission date to the standard mailbox. Extract from 101.

The received e-mail distribution condition 105 is for distributing the e-mail to the unique mailbox defined by the user, in addition to the standard mailbox, according to the attached information of the e-mail that has arrived in the standard mailbox 101. The condition and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition are stored in association with each other. The received electronic mail distribution condition extraction unit 106 receives the received electronic mail distribution condition 10
The condition for distributing the electronic mails stored in 5 to the unique mailbox and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition are extracted. The e-mail attached information collation unit 107 collates the attached information of the e-mail extracted by the e-mail attached information extraction unit 104 with the distribution condition of the e-mail extracted by the received e-mail distribution condition extraction unit 106 to the unique mailbox. . This verification is based on the e-mail attached information 10
This is performed by comparing the attached information of the electronic mail extracted in step 4 with the conditions for distributing the electronic mail to the unique mailbox extracted by the received electronic mail distribution condition extraction unit 106.

Storage destination unique mailbox specifying unit 108
Is the incoming e-mail distribution condition 10 defined by the user.
The unique mailbox that matches the condition is identified from the plurality of unique mailboxes in 5 as the storage destination of the received electronic mail. The electronic mail distribution unit 109 extracts the electronic mail that has reached the standard electronic mail box 101,
The e-mail storing destination unique mailbox specifying unit 108
Store in the unique mailbox specified in.

The unique mailbox name acquisition unit 113
Gets the name of the unique mailbox entered by the user when the user refers to the received e-mail. The received electronic mail acquisition unit 114 acquires an electronic mail existing in the unique mailbox by using the unique mailbox name acquired by the unique mailbox name acquisition unit 113 as a key. The received electronic mail title display unit 115 extracts the title of the electronic mail from the attached information of the electronic mail acquired by the received electronic mail acquisition unit 114 and displays it on the screen.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing the processing procedure of this embodiment. FIG. 4 shows the structure of the electronic mail, and FIG. 5 is an electronic mail auxiliary information table used in matching the electronic mail auxiliary information with the distribution condition set for the unique mailbox. FIG. 6 shows the internal structure of the received electronic mail distribution condition 105.

The processing procedure will be described below with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. Standard mailbox 105
Then, it is searched whether a new e-mail has arrived (process 201). If a new e-mail has arrived (process 202), the e-mail attached information table 5 shown in FIG.
0 is created based on the new electronic mail that has reached the standard mailbox 101 (process 203). As shown in FIG. 4, the electronic mail 40 is generally composed of attached information and the text of the electronic mail. As the information attached to the email,
There are titles, callers, call dates, etc. The electronic mail attached information table 50 of FIG. 5 is created by extracting the attached information of the electronic mail from the name of the received electronic mail and acquiring the value for each item unit in the attached information. The e-mail attachment information table 50 is for the name of the e-mail,
It is composed of the attached information parameter and a value for the attached information parameter. In FIG. 5, the attached information parameter is a sender, a transmission date, etc., and the values are “Hitachi Taro” and “H
It is 4.8.10 ".

Next, one name of the unique mailbox is extracted from the received electronic mail distribution conditions 105 shown in FIG. 6 (process 204). The received e-mail distribution condition 105 shown in FIG. 6 is composed of a condition for attached information of an e-mail and a name of a unique mailbox for the condition. The name of the unique mailbox can be defined by the user, and is "H4 / 7 sales mail" or the like in FIG. For example, if a character string “sales report” exists as a title for the attached information of the email and the transmission date is “H4.6.21 to H4.7.20”, the received email is unique. Mailbox "H
A condition such as storing is set in “4/7 sales mail”. “*” In “* sales report” indicates a wild card that represents an arbitrary character (column).

Returning to FIG. 2, the e-mail attached information shown in FIG.
It is substituted into e (process 205), and the distribution condition of the electronic mail corresponding to the name of the unique mailbox extracted in process 204 is substituted into the variable Condition (process 20).
6). Attribute and Condition are compared (process 207), 0 is substituted in the match flag if they do not match (process 208), and 1 is substituted in the match flag if they match (process 209). Next, the compound condition counter is incremented (process 210). Steps 205 to 209 are repeated several times for the composite condition. The composite condition number represents the number of conditions set for the attached information of the received electronic mail. In the example of FIG. 6, the composite condition number of the unique mailbox “H4 / 7 sales mail” is two, the title and the oscillation date. After the processing 205 to the processing 209 are repeated several times for the set composite condition, the match flag becomes 1
It is determined whether or not (process 212). Here, the match flag being 1 means that the attached information of the received electronic mail satisfies all the conditions set in the unique mailbox. If the match flag is 1, the name of the received e-mail is acquired from the e-mail attached information table 50 shown in FIG. 5, and the standard e-mail box 1 is acquired based on the name of the received e-mail.
The e-mail that reaches 01 is extracted (process 213). Next, the e-mail extracted in the process 213 is stored in the unique mailbox that satisfies the condition for the attached information of the received e-mail (process 214). If the match flag is 0, that is, if the condition set in the unique mailbox is not satisfied, whether the condition for another unique mailbox is set in the received email distribution condition 105 of FIG. It is determined (process 215), and if set, the composite condition counter is reset (process 2).
16), processing 204 to processing 214 is performed for the set unique mailbox.

Next, referring to the electronic mail stored in the unique mailbox will be described with reference to the screen example of FIG. The name of the unique mailbox set in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105 is displayed on the upper screen of FIG. 7. Here, in the unique mail box “H4 / 7 sales mail”, the received electronic mail distribution condition 1 in FIG.
As can be seen from 05, distribution conditions regarding titles and transmission dates are set. Here, in the upper screen in FIG. 7, the user is "H4 / 7 sales mail".
When is selected, the screen changes to the screen in the lower part of FIG. 7. The items displayed in the lower screen represent the electronic mails existing in the unique mailbox "H4 / 7 sales mail". These e-mails include the character string "sales report" in the title, and the transmission date is "H4.6.21 to H4.
7.20 ". On this screen, the user can refer to the body of the e-mail by designating the title of the displayed e-mail.

As described above, by setting the condition according to the attached information of the electronic mail received by the user and the unique mailbox in the condition, it is possible to perform the classification according to the attached information of the electronic mail. . Also, in the screen of FIG. 7, the name of the unique mailbox, or
Although only the name of the electronic mail is displayed, the administrator of the unique mailbox, the attribute of the electronic mail, and the like can be displayed in addition to the name.

In the above embodiment, the unique mailbox used is for storing the electronic mail that has reached the standard mailbox 101. Hereinafter, a resource (document file, table, etc.) created by an application program such as a word processor or spreadsheet software is specified as an original mailbox, and when the application program accesses the resource, the e-mail distributed to the resource is designated. A second embodiment of the present invention of the displaying method will be described. Designating the resource created by the application program in the unique mailbox means designating the resource created by the application program in the item of the unique mailbox in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105 shown in FIG.

FIG. 8 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the system according to the second embodiment. The standard mail box 101 stores the sent e-mail,
The email reception monitoring unit 102 is a standard mailbox 1.
Monitor 01 for new email. The electronic mail name extraction unit 103 extracts a new electronic mail that has arrived in the standard mailbox or an ID that uniquely identifies the electronic mail. The e-mail attached information extraction unit 104 extracts the attached information of the e-mail from the standard mailbox 101 based on the name or ID of the e-mail extracted by the e-mail name extraction unit 103. The received e-mail distribution condition extraction unit 106 extracts, from the received e-mail distribution condition 105, the distribution condition of the e-mail to the unique mailbox. The electronic mail attached information collation unit 107 compares the attached information of the received electronic mail with the distribution condition of the electronic mail extracted by the received electronic mail distribution condition extraction unit 106. The storage-destination-specific mailbox identifying unit 108 selects the unique mailbox matching the conditions from the plurality of unique mailboxes in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105 defined by the user.
Specify as the storage location of the received e-mail. The processing up to this point is similar to that of the embodiment of FIG. 1, but the following processing is different.

The unique mailbox attribute information 801 has attribute information for the unique mailbox defined by the user in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105. From the unique mailbox attribute information 801, the electronic mail / resource relation generating unit 802 acquires the unique mailbox specified by the storage destination unique mailbox specifying unit 108, that is, the location information of the resource created by the application program, Information related to mails and resources is stored in electronic mail / resource relation information 803. The application program execution unit 807 executes an application program such as a word processor and spreadsheet software. The resource management unit 808
It manages access requests issued by the application program execution unit 807 to the resource A 804, the resource B 805, and the resource C 806. When the resource management unit 807 receives the access request from the application program execution unit 807, the related e-mail name extraction unit 809 determines the name of the e-mail related to the resource for which the access request is made, and the e-mail / resource relation information. Extract from 803. The received electronic mail acquisition unit 810 acquires an electronic mail from the standard mailbox 101 using the name of the electronic mail extracted by the related electronic mail name extraction unit 809 as a key. The received e-mail title display unit 115 includes a received e-mail acquisition unit 81.
The title of the e-mail is extracted from the attached information of the e-mail acquired at 0 and displayed on the screen.

9 and 10 are flowcharts showing the processing procedure in the embodiment of FIG. FIG. 9 shows a processing procedure for generating a relationship between the received e-mail and the resource, which is the unique mailbox in the received e-mail distribution condition defined by the user, and FIG. 10 shows that the application program accesses the resource. This is a processing procedure for displaying an electronic mail related to the resource at a time point.
FIG. 11 shows the internal structure of the unique mailbox attribute information 801, which has attribute information for the unique mailbox set in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105. Figure 1
2 is e-mail / resource relation information 803
That is, the resource name, the e-mail name, and the location of the resource are stored in association with each other.

The processing procedure will be described below with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS.

In FIG. 9, the standard mailbox 101
5 is created from the attached information of the email sent to the user and the standard mailbox 1 is created.
01 attached information of the e-mail and the distribution condition defined in the received e-mail distribution condition 105 are collated (process 201 to process 211), and if they match (process 2)
12), the type of the unique mailbox is acquired from the unique mailbox attribute information shown in FIG. 11 (process 901).
This is done using the name of the unique mailbox as a key.
Next, it is determined whether the type of the unique mailbox is "resource" (process 902). If the type of the unique mailbox is "resource", the location of the unique mailbox, that is, the resource is shown in FIG. It is acquired from the mailbox attribute information (process 903). Next, the process 203
The name of the received e-mail is acquired from the e-mail attached information table 50 generated in (step 904), and the step 2
The name of the unique mailbox acquired in 04, that is, the name of the resource is registered in the e-mail / resource relation information 803 shown in FIG. 12 (process 905). At the same time, the name of the electronic mail acquired in process 904 and the location of the unique mailbox acquired in process 903 are also registered (process 906, process 907). Further, as a result of the comparison in the processing 902, if the type of the unique mailbox is not “resource”, the received electronic mail is acquired (processing 21
3), store in the unique mailbox (process 214).

Next, according to the flowchart shown in FIG. 10, a processing procedure for displaying an electronic mail related to the resource on the screen when the application program accesses the resource will be described.

First, an access request for a resource issued by the application program execution unit 807 is acquired (process 1001). The name of the resource to be accessed and the location of the resource are acquired from the access request acquired in process 1001 (1002). Next, the e-mail / resource relation information 803 shown in FIG.
Is searched using the name of the resource acquired in the process 1002 as a key (process 1003). As a result of this search, if the name of the resource used as the search key is registered in the e-mail / resource relation information 803 shown in FIG. 12 (process 1004), the e-mail / resource relation information 803 indicates that The name of the electronic mail is extracted (process 1005). Based on the name of the electronic mail extracted in this processing 1005, the title of the electronic mail is extracted from the standard mailbox 101, and the title of the electronic mail extracted in processing 1006 is displayed on the screen (processing 1007). As described above, it becomes possible to sort e-mails into resources, and when an application program accesses a resource while using the application program, the e-mail related to the resource is automatically extracted and referred to. You can

It is also possible to hierarchically manage the unique mailbox set by the user. Figure 1
FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the system for that purpose in the third embodiment of the present invention.

The received e-mail is collated by the e-mail attached information collating unit 107 with the distribution condition defined in the received e-mail distribution condition 1301 and the attached information of the received email. Storage destination original mace box specification part 1
302 receives the received e-mail, the name of the unique mailbox matched in the collation, and the pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 from the received e-mail distribution condition 1301. The pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 indicates the location of the distribution condition file set for the unique mailbox that is the distribution destination of the received electronic mail. The electronic mail distribution unit 1303 refers to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 according to the pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 acquired by the storage destination electronic mailbox specifying unit 1302, and receives the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 and the received electronic mail. Stored unique mailbox specification part 1 by collating with the attached information of the mail
The name of the unique mailbox defined in the unique mailbox matched as a result of the matching is stored in, for example, the unique mailbox A 1306a corresponding to the name of the unique mailbox acquired in step 302. Further, the electronic mails received at the same time are stored in, for example, the unique mailbox N1306n defined in the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 that matches as a result of the matching.

The unique mailbox name acquisition unit 113
Acquires the name of the unique mailbox that the user has entered. Receiving e-mail retrieval unit 1307 searches the unique mail box for the name, and acquires its own mailbox name of the e-mail name and even lower are stored in its own mailbox. The unique mailbox name display unit 1308 is used by the received electronic mail search unit 1307.
The name of the unique mailbox etc. identified in step 3 is displayed on the screen. The received electronic mail title display unit 115 displays the title of the electronic mail acquired by the received electronic mail search unit 1307 on the screen.

FIG. 14 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure in this embodiment. FIG. 15 shows the relationship between the received electronic mail distribution condition and the unique mailbox distribution condition. The processing procedure will be described below with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

The attached information of the received electronic mail is collated with the received electronic mail distribution condition, and if they match, the received electronic mail is extracted from the standard mailbox 101 (process 201 to process 213). The name of the electronic mail extracted in process 213 is stored (process 1401). next,
As a result of the collation, the received electronic mail distribution condition 1301 is searched using the name of the unique mailbox that matches the attached information of the received electronic mail as a key, and it is determined whether or not the pointer to the unique mailbox exists. (Process 1402) If the pointer exists, the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 is referred to based on the pointer, and the attached information of the received e-mail is compared with the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 (process 140).
3). Processing 1403 is processing 204 to processing 216 (processing 213 and processing 21) in the flowchart of FIG.
4 is excluded) is made into a subroutine. Process 14
If the match flag is "1" as a result of the collation in 03, the name of the unique mailbox in the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 is stored in the unique mailbox in the received electronic mail distribution condition 1301 (process 140).
5). For example, in FIG. 15, the title of the received e-mail includes the character string "sales report", the transmission date is "H4.6.21 to H4.7.20", and the sender is "Hitachi Ichiro." If “”, “H4 / 7 sales mail” is specified as the original mailbox, and “H4 / 7 sales mail” is assigned to the original mailbox distribution condition 1
Based on the pointer to 304, collation with the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 is performed, and “H4 / 7 Tokyo” is specified as the matching unique mailbox. At this point, the name of the unique mailbox "H4 / 7 Tokyo" is stored in the unique mailbox "H4 / 7 sales mail". The pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304 for the unique mailbox name stored in the process 1405 is acquired (process 140).
6). The processes 1402 to 1406 are repeated until there is no pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304. When there is no pointer to the unique mailbox distribution condition 1304, the electronic mail acquired in the process 213 is stored in the unique mailbox in the unique mailbox.

FIG. 16 shows an example of a hierarchical structure of mailboxes and a screen example corresponding to each hierarchy when the unique mailboxes are hierarchically managed. The name of the unique mailbox is displayed on the screen at the top of FIG.
Select "/ 7 sales mail" to move to the middle screen. The name of the unique mailbox existing in "H4 / 7 sales mail" is displayed on the middle screen. Here, "H4 Select "/ 7 Tokyo Mail" to display the lower screen. A list of e-mail titles is displayed on the lower screen. As described above, incoming e-mail distribution condition 1301 and unique mailbox distribution By setting the pointers to the distribution conditions in the condition 1304, the unique mailbox can be managed hierarchically.

It is possible to update the received electronic mail distribution condition shown in FIG. 6 by interactively editing on the screen. FIG. 17 is a functional block diagram showing a functional configuration in such a fourth embodiment of the present invention.

Received e-mail distribution condition reading unit 1
701 reads, from the received electronic mail 105, the condition for the auxiliary information of the received electronic mail and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition. The received electronic mail distribution condition display unit 1702 displays the information read by the received electronic mail distribution condition reading unit 1701 on the screen. Received email distribution condition editing unit 170
3 interactively edits the condition for the attached information of the e-mail displayed in the received e-mail distribution condition display unit 1702 and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition according to a user's instruction. The received e-mail distribution condition accumulation unit 1704 includes a received e-mail distribution condition editing unit 17
In 03, the condition for the attached information of the e-mail updated by the editing such as update, deletion, insertion and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition are accumulated in the received e-mail distribution condition 105. As described above, the user interactively sets on the screen the condition for the attached information of the received e-mail and the name of the unique mailbox for the condition,
By updating, the operating environment of the e-mail system unique to the user can be customized.

In the above, the matching of the attached information of the received e-mail and the unique mailbox distribution condition is performed by pattern matching of both. Here, a fifth embodiment of the present invention of a method of setting a synonym for the condition in the condition set in the unique mailbox distribution condition and performing collation for the synonym explain. FIG. 18 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure in this embodiment. FIG. 19 shows the internal structure of a synonym file in which synonyms for the conditions set in the unique mailbox distribution condition are accumulated.
For example, in FIG. 19, synonyms such as “term end report” and “term performance” are set for “accounting statement”. The processing procedure will be described below with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

Attr is added to the attached information of the received e-mail.
It is substituted into ibut (process 1801), and the distribution condition set in the received e-mail distribution condition 105 is substituted into the variable Condition (process 1802). Next, the synonym file shown in FIG.
Is used as a key to search (process 1803). Process 1803
The number of synonyms for Condition is extracted from the search result of (1804) and the counter is set to 0 (1805). Next, pattern matching between the synonyms extracted in the process 1804 and the Attribute is performed (process 1807), and if they match, the match flag is set to 1 (process 1808). If they do not match, the counter and the number of synonyms are compared (step 1809). If the counter is less than or equal to the number of synonyms, the counter is incremented (step 1811). The processes 1806 to 1811 are repeated several times as synonyms. If all synonyms and Attribute do not match, 0 is set in the match flag (process 181).
0).

After distributing the received e-mail to the unique mailbox defined by the user, it is possible to maintain the e-mail in units of the unique mailbox. FIG. 20 is a flow chart showing a processing procedure in the sixth embodiment of the present invention for this purpose. The processing procedure will be described below with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

First, the maintenance command such as deletion and backup issued by the user to the unique mailbox is acquired (process 2001). From the command acquired in the process 2001, the name of the unique mailbox as a reference is acquired (process 2002). Next, the process 2002
Using the name of the unique mailbox as the operation target acquired in step 1 as a key, the electronic mail existing in the unique mailbox is searched (process 2003). From the search result in the process 2003, a correspondence table of the name of the unique mailbox and the name of the electronic mail existing in the unique mailbox is created (process 2004). An electronic mail is extracted from the correspondence table created in process 2004 (process 2005). For the e-mail extracted in process 2005, process 200
The command acquired in 1 is executed (process 2006). It is determined whether the command has been executed for all the electronic mails existing in the correspondence table created in the process 2004 (process 2007). Process 20 from Process 2005 to Process 2007
Repeat for all emails in the correspondence table created in 04. This enables batch deletion, batch backup, etc. for each unique mailbox.

When the received e-mail is stored in the unique mailbox defined by the user, a process for the e-mail stored in the unique mailbox is set, and the process is executed when the e-mail is stored. It is also possible. FIG. 21 shows the conditions for distributing received e-mail according to the seventh embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 21, a pointer to processing is set for the unique mailbox. This is the original mailbox "H4 /
"7 sales mail" indicates that the code conversion processing program is executed when the received electronic mail is stored.

In the above, the attached information such as the sender, the transmission date, the title, etc. of the received electronic mail has been sorted. Hereinafter, an embodiment will be described in which the received electronic mail is sorted based on the internal information indicating the content of the received electronic mail. To do this, it is necessary to extract the internal information of the received email. There are two ways to extract internal information. One is a method of extracting internal information based on positional information. The other is a method of extracting internal information using a keyword. Each will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 22 shows a functional block diagram according to the eighth embodiment of the present invention. Fixed document form name acquisition unit 220
1 acquires the form name of the fixed form document which constitutes the internal information of the received electronic mail from the auxiliary information of the electronic mail received by the standard mailbox 101. The area name acquisition unit 2202 in the standard document form uses the standard document form name acquired by the standard document form name acquisition unit 2201 as a key, and the area name constituting the standard document form,
The layout information of the area is acquired from the standard document form configuration information 2203.

FIG. 23 shows the standard document form configuration information 220.
3 shows an internal configuration of No. 3. Standard document form configuration information 220
Reference numeral 3 is composed of a form name of a fixed form document, a region name forming the fixed form document form, and layout information of the region. The internal information extraction unit 2204 extracts the internal information of the received electronic mail corresponding to the area name from the area name acquired by the area name acquisition unit 2202 in the fixed document form and the layout information. The internal information collating unit 2205 collates the condition set in the received electronic mail distribution condition 105 with the internal information extracted by the internal information extracting unit 2204. As a result of the collation by the internal information collating unit 2205, the storage destination unique mailbox identifying unit 108 identifies the unique mailbox to be stored.

Next, a method of extracting internal information of an electronic mail by using a keyword will be described. FIG. 24 shows a functional block diagram. Keyword relative position information acquisition unit 24
01 uses the condition parameter extracted from the received e-mail distribution condition extraction unit 106 as a key to acquire the relative position information of the keyword and the internal information of the e-mail for the keyword from the keyword information 2402. Figure 25
Shows the internal structure of the keyword information. The keyword information in FIG. 25 is composed of a keyword and relative position information indicating the relative position of the internal information of the electronic mail with respect to the keyword. The internal information extraction unit 2403 extracts the internal information of the electronic mail based on the keyword acquired by the keyword relative position information acquisition unit 2401 and the relative position information corresponding to the keyword. This will be specifically described below.

In FIG. 25, the keyword "Date",
The relative position "Afetr 30" indicates the "30" character after "Date". That is, the internal information for the keyword "date" is "30" after "date".
The internal information extraction unit 2403 indicates
The "30" character after "Date" is extracted from the email as internal information. The internal information collation unit 2205 collates the internal information extracted by the internal information extraction unit 2403 with the distribution condition extracted by the received electronic mail distribution condition extraction unit 106. As a result of the collation performed by the internal information collating unit 2205,
The storage destination unique mailbox specifying unit 108 specifies the unique mailbox to be stored. Further, in the keyword information of FIG. 25, when the item of the relative position is not set, the keyword itself is used as the internal information for the matching. That is, the condition parameter set in the received e-mail distribution condition 105 is used as a keyword to search the e-mail received by the standard mailbox 101, and if there is a word that matches the keyword, the condition is satisfied. .

Finally, FIG. 3 shows the hardware configuration of the computer system used in the electronic mailbox management method of the present invention. This is not a specific configuration of the present invention, but is a central processing unit (CP) that executes system and application programs, like a general information processing apparatus.
U), input device such as keyboard, output device such as CRT,
External storage device such as hard disk, ROM, RA
It consists of a memory such as M.

[0053]

According to the present invention, in an electronic mail system, conditions and the conditions for analyzing attached information attached to a received electronic mail and distributing the received electronic mail set by a user to a unique mailbox. By collating with the attached information of the e-mail, the unique mailbox in which the received e-mail should be stored is specified from the plurality of unique mailboxes, and the e-mail is stored in the unique mailbox. Therefore, e-mails having similar adjunct information among e-mails having various adjunct information can be automatically sorted into one unique mailbox without user's instruction. It is no longer necessary to refer to the list of emails received by users to manage emails,
Further, it is not necessary to perform an operation of searching for an electronic mail having attached information to which a search key is given. Furthermore, the conditions for distributing received e-mails to unique mailboxes can be set and updated uniquely by the user, making it easy to create an environment for using the e-mail system that suits the user's own business. Can be built into.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram of a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a hardware configuration diagram of a computer system used in the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of an electronic mail used in the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of an electronic mail attached information table used in the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a received electronic mail distribution condition according to the first embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of an example of an execution screen according to the first embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 8 is a system configuration diagram of a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure for storing in a unique mailbox in the second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure for referring to an electronic mail in a unique mailbox in the second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is an explanatory diagram of unique mailbox attribute information according to the second embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 12 is a diagram illustrating an electronic mail according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
It is explanatory drawing of the relation information between resources.

FIG. 13 is a system configuration diagram of a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 14 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 15 is an explanatory diagram of a unique mailbox distribution condition according to the third embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 16 is an explanatory diagram of a hierarchical structure of a unique mailbox and an execution screen example according to the third embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 17 is a system configuration diagram of a fourth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 18 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of a fifth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 19 is an explanatory diagram of a synonym file according to the fifth embodiment of this invention.

FIG. 20 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure of the sixth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 21 is an explanatory diagram of conditions for distributing received electronic mail according to the seventh embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 22 is a system configuration diagram of an eighth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 23 is an explanatory diagram of standard document form configuration information in the eighth example of the present invention.

FIG. 24 is a system configuration diagram of an eighth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 25 is an explanatory diagram of keyword information according to the eighth embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

101 ... Standard mailbox, 102 ... E-mail reception monitoring unit, 103 ... E-mail name extraction unit, 104 ... E-mail auxiliary information extraction unit, 105 ... Incoming e-mail distribution condition, 106 ... Incoming e-mail distribution condition extraction unit,
107 ... E-mail attached information collating unit, 108 ... Storage destination unique mailbox specifying unit, 109 ... E-mail sorting unit, 110 ... Unique mailbox A, 111 ... Unique mailbox B, 112 ... Unique mailbox C, 113
... Individual mailbox name acquisition section, 114 ... Received e-mail acquisition section, 115 ... Received e-mail title display section.

Claims (8)

[Claims] 1. In an electronic mail system which operates in a network environment composed of a plurality of information processing devices having a computer and a dialogue terminal, a user's own mailbox provided as standard by the electronic mail system (hereinafter referred to as "standard"). In addition to (mailbox), a plurality of user-specific mailboxes (hereinafter, unique mailboxes) are provided, and condition parameters for attached information including at least one of sender, sender date, and title of the received email,
And, the name of the unique mailbox as a storage destination of the email satisfying the condition is defined as a received email distribution condition, and when the email is received by the standard mailbox, the received email is attached. Information is extracted from the corresponding electronic mail, and the extracted auxiliary information is collated with the auxiliary information specified in the received electronic mail distribution condition, whereby the plurality of unique mailboxes for the received electronic mail satisfying the condition From the above, a unique mailbox that is the storage destination of the received e-mail is specified, and the received e-mail is extracted from the standard mailbox and stored in the specified unique mailbox. Boss management method. 2. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein a resource created by an application program is designated as an original mailbox defined in the received email distribution condition, and an email is received by the standard mailbox. Then, by matching the e-mail with the received e-mail distribution condition, the unique mailbox that is the resource of the application program corresponding to the attached information of the received e-mail is specified, and the specified unique mailbox is When the application program accesses the resource of the application program, the relation information with the received e-mail is generated, and the related e-mail is extracted from the standard mailbox by referring to the relation information. A method for managing a mailbox, which is characterized by sending out and presenting the extracted received electronic mail to a user. 3. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein a plurality of unique mailboxes in a lower layer are provided for a specific unique mailbox name of the received electronic mail distribution condition, and a plurality of unique mailboxes in the lower layer are provided. When the distribution condition of the unique mailbox is determined as the distribution condition of the unique mailbox, and when the specific unique mailbox is specified as the storage destination of the received email based on the received email distribution condition, the additional information of the received email is further included. Is compared with the original mailbox distribution condition, and the received electronic mail is stored in the unique mailbox satisfying the unique mailbox distribution condition by the comparison. 4. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein the name of the unique mailbox and the condition parameter of the received electronic mail distribution condition are displayed in association with each other on the screen, and the displayed received electronic mail is displayed. A mailbox management method characterized by updating the distribution condition of received e-mails by interactively adding, deleting, changing, etc. editing distribution conditions on the screen. 5. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein a synonym file defining synonyms of condition parameters for the attached information is provided, and when collating the received electronic mail with the received electronic mail distribution condition, A mailbox management method, characterized in that the synonyms accumulated in the synonym file are also subjected to condition determination for attached information to identify the unique mailbox. 6. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein the correspondence relationship between the name of the unique mailbox and the received electronic mail existing in the unique mailbox is managed,
A mailbox management method characterized in that a batch deletion or a batch backup of e-mails in a unique mailbox is performed by referring to the correspondence using the name of the unique mailbox as a key. 7. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein the received electronic mail is stored in a specific unique mailbox in addition to the condition parameter for the received electronic mail in the received electronic mail distribution condition. , Setting a process to be executed for the e-mail, extracting the executed process from the received e-mail distribution condition, and executing the set process before storing the received e-mail in the unique mailbox. A mailbox management method, characterized in that the received e-mail is stored in the unique mailbox at the end. 8. The mailbox management method according to claim 1, wherein, in the received electronic mail distribution condition, a condition parameter for internal information representing the content itself of the electronic mail and the condition parameter are provided separately from the auxiliary information. A corresponding unique mailbox is set, and when an electronic mail is received in the standard mailbox, internal information of the received electronic mail is extracted, and the extracted internal information is collated with the received electronic mail distribution condition. By doing so, the received e-mail is stored in the unique mailbox set by the user, which is a mailbox management method.