JPH1011376A - Electronic mail system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To recognize a main which is already read by a user in a certain terminal in another terminal as a read mail by providing a control mail detecting means and a mail display means, etc., for displaying a new mail which is detected by means of a new mail detecting means. SOLUTION: A mail receiving means 2 receives a mail group which is distributed from an electronic mail server to the terminal in accordance with the mail distribution request of a mail distribution requesting means 1. A control mail transmitting means 3 transmits a control mail having time information concerning the received mail group to a mail address itself. The new mail detecting means 5 judges that the mail arrived at the electronic mail server after a time which is indicated for time information held by the latest control mail, which is detected by the control mail detecting means 4, is the new mail and displays it in the mail display means 6. Therefore, the mail which is already read by the user in a certain terminal is recognized as the read mail even in another optical terminal.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to an electronic mail system, and more particularly to an electronic mail system in which the same person accesses a single electronic mail server from a plurality of terminals to receive an electronic mail.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP3 (Post O
In an e-mail system using ffice Protocol-Version 3), after a user accesses an e-mail server and receives an e-mail, the storage system on the e-mail server should not be used for unnecessary e-mail data.
It is customary to delete the mail data immediately.

For this reason, conventionally, in an environment in which the same user accesses a single e-mail server from a plurality of terminals to receive mail, each mail is stored only in the terminal that has received the mail, and as a whole the mail is received. Was scattered to multiple terminals, which hindered storing and managing received mail.

[0004] In order to prevent the mail from being scattered to a plurality of terminals, there is the following electronic mail application. In other words, when a user accesses an e-mail server from a specific terminal that stores and manages all e-mails addressed to him and receives e-mail, the user deletes the e-mail data on the e-mail server. Various settings can be made so as not to delete the mail data on the e-mail server when a mail is received from a terminal other than.

[0005]

On the other hand, in the electronic mail system of the Internet, a mail which has been read by a user (hereinafter, referred to as read mail) and a mail which has not been read (hereinafter, referred to as unread mail). Identification is not managed by the email server, but is left to the management of the user and the email application used by the user.

Therefore, when reading mail from a plurality of terminals to a single electronic mail server as described above,
Each mail is judged as unread mail for each terminal, and each time the user accesses the e-mail server from one terminal and tries to read the newly arrived mail, the mail already read on other terminals is also unread There was a problem that it was displayed as mail.

To solve the above problems, for example, a so-called personal computer communication service (commercial BBS (Bulletin
Board System) etc., an email system that manages unread / read emails on the email server side is conceivable. However, this method requires replacement of the entire e-mail system.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and has as its object to provide a single server that does not manage the identification of unread mail and read mail from a plurality of terminals. In the form of accessing an e-mail server and receiving e-mail, the e-mail that has already been read on one terminal can be read by another e-mail application without changing the conventional e-mail server. An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic mail system that can be recognized as a read mail by any terminal.

[0009]

In order to achieve this object, an electronic mail system according to the first aspect of the present invention comprises a mail delivery requesting means 1 for sending a mail from an electronic mail server to a terminal, as shown in FIG. When distribution is requested, the mail receiving means 2 receives a mail group distributed from the electronic mail server to the terminal in response to the mail distribution request. The control mail transmitting means 3 transmits a control mail having time information on the received mail group to the mail address itself that has received the mail group. When the control mail detecting means 4 detects the latest control mail from the mail group received by the mail receiving means, the new mail detecting means 5 indicates the time information of the latest control mail detected by the control mail detecting means. The mail arrived at the e-mail server after the time is determined as a new mail, and is displayed by the mail display means 6.

[0010]

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

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a situation in which the same person accesses a single electronic mail server 10 from a plurality of terminals (terminal 11 and terminal 12) assumed by the present invention. As a situation in which the same person accesses a single e-mail server from a plurality of terminals, a situation in which the same person accesses from an office, a home, or a destination using a portable terminal can be considered.

FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration in a case where an electronic mail server 50 is accessed from two terminals, a terminal A30 and a terminal B40. The terminal A30, the terminal B40, and the e-mail server 50 are mutually connected by the signal line 20.

The terminal A30 has a built-in program for realizing each function as a mail distribution requesting unit 1, a mail receiving unit 2, a control mail transmitting unit 3, a control mail detecting unit 4, and a new mail detecting unit 5 on a computer. RO
M33, a CPU 32 for executing the program, a RAM 34 used as a work area, an I / O 36 for transmitting and receiving a signal such as an e-mail from the signal line 20, and a display device 35 as an e-mail display means 6. And a bus 31 to be used.

The terminal B40 has the same configuration as the terminal A30, and includes a bus 41, a CPU 42, a ROM 43, a RAM 44,
It comprises a display device 45 and an I / O 46.

The e-mail server 50 is a ROM having a built-in program for realizing, on a computer, a function for distributing a mail in response to a mail distribution request from a terminal.
53, a CPU 52 for executing the program, a RAM 54 used as a work area, an I / O 56 for transmitting and receiving signals such as mail from the signal line 20, and an HDD 55 as a mailbox for storing mail.
And a bus 51 for connecting these.

FIGS. 4 to 7 are diagrams showing the flow of the embodiment. FIG. 4 shows the overall flow, FIG. 5 shows the detailed flow of step 5 (hereinafter abbreviated as S5 and the like), FIG. 6 shows the detailed flow of S7, and FIG. 7 shows the detailed flow of S8.

FIG. 8 is based on the flow charts of FIGS.
FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a procedure for accessing an e-mail server 50 from terminals A30 and B40 shown in FIG. 3 and receiving mail to detect unread mail.

FIG. 9 is a diagram hierarchically showing each element constituting the mail. The elements constituting the mail 60 are roughly divided into mail additional information 61 sometimes called a mail header and a mail body 62. As shown in FIG. 9, the mail additional information 61 includes a message identifier 63 unique to each message, a message sender 64, a sending time 65, a message receiver 66, and an e-mail server Box 5
5, a reception time 67, which is the time saved in 5, and a title 6, which is used to simply express the contents of the mail body 62.
8 and the like. The email body 62 includes
A message 69 transmitted by the sender of the mail to the recipient is described. Note that the configuration of the mail of the present invention can be considered in the same manner as in the present embodiment as long as there is time information at which the electronic mail server received the mail, other than the configuration of the present embodiment.

In the following, this embodiment will be described mainly with reference to FIG. 8 while making each step of FIG. 8 correspond to the flow shown in FIG. 4 to FIG.

As a method of transmitting and receiving mail between an electronic mail server and a terminal, for example, SMTP and POP3 are known on the Internet, and the method of transmitting and receiving is not the main requirement of the present invention. Description is omitted.

First, No. 1 (hereinafter abbreviated as N1 or the like), the mails existing in the mailbox 55 of the e-mail server 50 immediately before the terminal A30 starts to access the mails are stored in the order from the oldest reception time 67 of the additional mail information 61.
They are denoted as a, b, and c. The title shown in N1 or the like is a title included in the mail additional information, and is used in this embodiment together with alphabets such as a and b to identify each mail.

N2 corresponds to S1 in FIG.
Issues a mail distribution request to the e-mail server 50. N3 corresponds to S2 in FIG. 4 and the electronic mail server 50 responds to the mail distribution request and
One mail is delivered to terminal A30. N4 is S in FIG.
3 and the terminal A30 receives these three mails. In S4 of FIG. 4, the terminal A30 is connected to the e-mail server 5
Since three e-mails have been received, the process proceeds to S5 in FIG. N5 corresponds to S5 in FIG.
Creates the control mail (d) after detecting the latest one of the three received mails by comparing the reception time of the mail additional information (S10 in FIG. 5).
1) and transmit it to itself (the sender of the control mail) (S12 in FIG. 5). At S6 in FIG. 4, the e-mail server 50 receives the control mail, and as shown at N5, there are four mails a, b, c, and d in the mailbox 55 of the e-mail server 50.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing elements of the control mail (d) stored in the mail box 55 in the same configuration as in FIG. The control mail has a specific format so that the terminal A30 and the like can easily distinguish it from a normal mail. That is, the title 78 in the mail additional information 71 is a character string “Control Message”, and the message 79 in the mail body 72 includes the reception time of the latest mail (c) 60 (shown in FIG. 9) detected earlier. "96-5 / 1/17: 01: 00" which is the character string shown in FIG.

N6 corresponds to S7 in FIG.
Detects the latest control mail from the three received mails. In order to detect the control mail from the mail, for example, from among all the received mails (S2 in FIG. 6)
0), the title is a character string “Control Message” (S21 in FIG. 6), and the sender of the mail is the same as the receiver (S22 in FIG. 6). Further, in order to detect the latest control mail, the reception time of the mail additional information may be compared (S23 in FIG. 6) as in the method used for the previous mail. With the above operation, the latest control mail (b) is detected.

N7 corresponds to S8 in FIG.
Acquires the time information T of the latest control mail (b) detected at N6 (S30 in FIG. 7), and after the time indicated by the time information T, the mailbox 55 of the e-mail server 50.
Stored in, and not a control mail mail "c. The title = Hello" and detected as unread mail (S3 in Fig. 7
1) and displays it on the display device 35 of the terminal A30 (S in FIG. 4).
9) After that, the access to the e-mail server 50 is terminated.

When detecting and displaying unread mail, the control mail may be detected and displayed in the same manner as ordinary mail. However, as in the present embodiment, the latest mail excluding the control mail is excluded. If only the e-mail is displayed on the display device 35, it is not necessary for the operator to look at unnecessary control mails.

At N 8, after the access of the terminal A 30 is completed, the electronic mail server 50 receives the new mail “e. Title = new mail” and stores it in the mailbox 55. As a result, there are five mails a, b, c, d, and e in the mailbox 55.

From N9 to N11, in the same manner as from N2 to N4, the terminal B40 issues a mail distribution request to the e-mail server 50 and receives five mails.

At N12, similarly to N5, the terminal B detects the latest one (e) of the received five mails, and then creates a control mail (f) and sends it to itself. . Therefore, the mails existing in the mailbox 55 of the electronic mail server 50 are a, b, c, d, e, f
It becomes six.

At N13, similarly to N6, the terminal B4
0 detects the latest control mail (d) from the five mails received.

At N14, similarly to N7, the terminal B4
0 indicates that the mail “e. Title = new mail” stored in the mailbox 55 of the e-mail server 50 after the latest control mail (d) detected at N13 is detected as an unread mail, and the display device 45 of the terminal B40 is detected. , The access to the e-mail server 50 is terminated.

As time information of the control mail,
It is also conceivable to use the transmission time or the reception time in the mail additional information of the control mail.

It is also conceivable to delete an old control mail stored in the mailbox of the electronic mail server every time a control mail is transmitted from the terminal.

The control mail is transmitted immediately after receiving the mail from the server, after detecting the control mail from the received mail, and after detecting the unread mail from the latest detected control mail. The same is conceivable.

[0035]

As is apparent from the above description, the electronic mail system according to the first aspect of the present invention is a conventional electronic mail system using SMTP and POP3 widely used on the Internet. The same person can access a single e-mail server from multiple terminals by changing only the e-mail application used on the terminal without changing the server and sending control mail to the sender when receiving e-mail Also, when receiving an e-mail, it is possible to always display only the unread e-mail on any terminal.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram in which a single electronic mail server is accessed from a plurality of terminals assumed by the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a flow of the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a flow of the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a flow of the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a flow of the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a procedure in the embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a data configuration of a mail according to the embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of a control mail according to the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 30 terminal A 32 CPU 33 ROM 34 RAM 35 display device 36 I / O 40 terminal B 42 CPU 43 ROM 44 RAM 45 display device 46 I / O 50 e-mail server

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A mail delivery requesting means for requesting delivery of mail from an electronic mail server to a terminal, and receiving a mail for receiving a mail group delivered from the electronic mail server to the terminal in response to the mail delivery request. Means, a transmission destination is a mail address itself which has received the mail group, and a control mail transmitting means for transmitting a control mail having time information relating to the mail group in the content; a latest control from the mail group Control mail detection means for detecting mail; and new mail detection for judging a mail arrived at the e-mail server after a time indicated by time information of the latest control mail detected by the control mail detection means as a new mail. Means, and mail display means for displaying a new mail detected by the new mail detection means. E-mail systems that.