JPH10240649A - Device and system for processing electronic mail - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce labor for opening to the public by opening a mail to be opened to the public without performing a complicated operation. SOLUTION: When a user A transmits an electronic mail addressed to the user B, a mail server 360 receives the electronic mail transmitted from the user A and transmits it to an open server 370. The open server 370 receives the electronic mails from the mail server 360, extracts a specified electronic mail from the received electronic mails based on filtering conditions for sampling the specified electronic mail, opens the extracted electronic mail to the public and returns the non-extracted electronic mails to the mail server 360. Then, when the users C and D access the open server 370, the electronic mail opened to the public is viewed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail processing apparatus and system for publishing electronic mail satisfying specific conditions.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As offices have become paperless, it has become common to send notices from the upper level of a company by e-mail to managers instead of paper.

Conventionally, in such a paperless office, generally, a manager who has received the notices often forwards the sent e-mail to his subordinates.

However, in this conventional method, each subordinate has a copy of data of the same notification type, so that the storage capacity of the terminal owned by each subordinate is wasted, and data management is performed by each individual. Was likely to cause accidents such as erasing necessary items.

[0005] Therefore, in recent years, a public server has appeared, so that as long as a manager registers the sent data in the public server, subordinates can see the data registered in the public server. It is now possible to solve the problem of double management of data when transferring data from a job to a subordinate.

However, even in this method, the manager
Recognizing that it was a notification email, it had to be edited and published in the form of a public page, which required excessive effort.

Therefore, there is a method using an electronic mail transmission / reception application. By setting a condition called filtering condition in the e-mail sending and receiving application, it recognizes whether the sent e-mail is an e-mail that meets the conditions and sends it to the mailbox that is the storage for specific e-mails. Some have a filtering function of sorting and storing. Using this mechanism, managers can launch an e-mail sending / receiving application, create a notification mailbox, and automatically collect only notification mail. Then, the manager performed an operation to upload the contents of the mailbox to the public server.

[0008]

However, in the above conventional example, in order to reflect the new notification mail sent to the public server, first, an electronic mail transmission / reception application is started, and the mail is acquired from the mail server. It was necessary to sort the mailboxes and update the contents of the notification mailbox.

Further, it is necessary to notify the public server that the notification mailbox has been updated, and perform an operation of updating the contents of the mailbox public page on the public server.

As described above, in the conventional method, the operation procedure until the mail is made public is complicated.

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has as its object to publish a mail to be disclosed without performing complicated operations.

[0012]

In order to achieve the above object, an electronic mail processing apparatus of the present invention extracts a specific electronic mail from a receiving means for receiving an electronic mail from a mail server for transmitting and receiving the electronic mail. Condition setting means for setting conditions for, based on the conditions set by the condition setting means, from the e-mail received by the receiving means, extraction means for extracting a specific e-mail,
A publishing means for publishing the electronic mail extracted by the extracting means in a publishing area;

[0013] To achieve the above object, an electronic mail processing system according to the present invention comprises an electronic mail processing system comprising a first terminal, a second terminal, a first server, and a second server. In the system, the first terminal sends an e-mail addressed to a terminal other than the first terminal, the first server receives the e-mail from the first terminal,
The second server receives the e-mail from the first server, and extracts a specific e-mail from the received e-mails based on a condition for extracting the specific e-mail. Publish the extracted e-mail to a public area, the second terminal accesses the second server,
Receiving information of the electronic mail published in the public area;

[0014]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

(First Embodiment) Hereinafter, a first embodiment of the present invention will be described.

FIG. 1 is a network configuration diagram according to the first embodiment. Terminals A310, B320, C330, and D340, which are owned by users A, B, C, and D, respectively, connect to a mail server 360 that distributes mail and a public server 370 that publishes mail via a network 350. Have been.

FIG. 2 is a hardware configuration diagram in each terminal in FIG. Reference numeral 311 denotes a CPU, which controls the entire terminal. A ROM 312 stores various application programs. 313 is a RAM, and CP
Used as a work area by U311. 314 is C
It is an RT display, and displays the processing contents by the CPU 311. A printer 315 prints a processing result by the CPU 311. An interface device 316 serves as a connection unit to the network 350. In addition,
The hardware configuration of the mail server 360 and the public server 370 is almost the same as the hardware configuration of each terminal except that the CRT display 314 and the printer 315 are not provided.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the R in the public server 370 in FIG.
FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of an electronic mail processing program according to the first embodiment, stored in the OM.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 110 denotes a control unit for controlling the whole; 120, a mail information acquisition unit for acquiring mail information from a mail server; 130, a filtering condition management unit for managing conditions for filtering mail; The filtering condition determination unit 150 determines whether the mail information acquired by the acquisition unit 120 matches the condition managed by the filtering condition management unit 130. A public page creation section that converts the public page format,
Reference numeral 160 denotes a page management unit that manages a page created by the public page creation unit 150, and 170 denotes a page publication unit that publishes a page managed by the page management unit 160 in response to a request from a client application.

FIG. 4 shows an example of the filtering condition, in which the sender is the user A and the recipient is the user B, and the message described in the message field of the e-mail includes a character string "notification". It is a condition.

As the filtering condition, a file describing the filtering condition is stored in the filtering condition management unit 130.
Set by specifying in.

The operation when an electronic mail of a business meeting this condition is sent from user A to user B will be described with reference to FIGS. 5 and 6.

FIG. 5 shows a route in which the mail sent from the user A to the user B is disclosed to the users C and D as third parties.

In FIG. 1, terminal A 310 stores an electronic mail transmitting / receiving application, terminal B 320 stores an electronic mail transmitting / receiving application, terminal C 330 stores a public page browsing application, and terminal D 340 stores a public page browsing application in ROM. And 380 indicates mail information sent by the user A (that is, the terminal A).

The user A creates mail information 380 addressed to the user B using an electronic mail transmission / reception application, and sends the mail information 380 to the mail server 360. Normally, the user B obtains the mail information 380 from the mail server 360 by an electronic mail transmission / reception application.

However, in the first embodiment, instead of the user B acquiring the mail information 380, the public server 370 acquires the mail information 380 from the mail server 360, and the sender of the e-mail is A, If the message field contains the word "notification", it will be published there. The users C and D can acquire the information of the mail information 380 from the public server using each public page browsing application (a so-called WWW browser or the like). If the sender of the e-mail is not B or the message field does not contain the word "notification",
The e-mail is sent back from the public server 370 to the mail server 360.

Then, the public server 370 is connected to the mail server 360
The process from acquiring email information 380 to publishing,
This will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the flow of processing performed by the control unit 110 in the public server 370.

The control unit 110 performs the processing shown in FIG. 6 at regular intervals. In step S410, mail information acquisition section 120 inquires of mail server 360 whether there is any unprocessed mail. If there is no unprocessed mail, the process ends. If there is an unprocessed mail, in step S420, the mail information obtaining unit 120 extracts the first mail of the unprocessed mail.

Next, in step S430, the filtering condition determination unit 140 receives the target mail information 380 from the mail information acquisition unit 120, extracts the filtering condition managed by the filtering condition management unit 130, and It is determined whether the information 380 matches the filtering condition. In the determination in this case, whether the recipient information included in the mail information 380 is the user B, the sender information is the user A, and the message field of the e-mail includes the character string “notification”. Is checked, and when all the conditions are satisfied, it is considered that the filtering condition is met.

If it is determined that the filtering condition is satisfied, the process proceeds to step S440, and the public page creation unit 15
0 changes the target mail information 380 to the format of the public page.

The public page creating section 150 has a skeleton for creating a public page. This skeleton is described in a language obtained by adding a function for publishing an e-mail to the HTML language for describing a public page.

FIGS. 7 and 8 show examples of skeletons. In the example of the skeleton, the list is divided into a list page (FIG. 7) for displaying a list of mails matching the conditions, and a mail information page (FIG. 8) for displaying each mail information 380 as an individual page.

In FIG. 7, 710 is a language description of the skeleton of the list page, 720 is a language description of the created list page, 730 is an image on the screen of the created list page, and 740 is a sender field of each mail. , 750 is a sending date field of each mail, 760 is a message field of each mail, 770 is a link information field to a mail information page, and in FIG. 8, 810 is a language description of a skeleton of the mail information page, 820 Is the language description of the created mail information page, 830 is the image on the screen of the created mail information page, 840 is the sender field of each mail, 850 is the sending date field of each mail, 860 is the message of each mail A field 870 indicates a body field of each mail.

The public page creating section 150 creates a language description 820 of the mail information page of each mail using the mail information page skeleton language description 810. By replacing the body field of the mail information page skeleton language description 810 with the body information of each mail, a mail information page language description 820 of each mail is created. These pages are managed by the page management unit 160.

When the mail information page is completed, the public page creation unit 150 creates a language description 720 of the list page having link information for reaching the page using the list page skeleton language description 710. Replace the sender field 740, sending date field 750, message field 760, and link information field 770 of each email described in the list page skeleton language description 710 with the sender, sending date, and message information of each email. As a result, the list page language description 720 is created.

In step S430 of FIG.
If it is determined that the filtering condition is not satisfied, the process proceeds to step S450, where the mail acquired in step S420 is returned to the mail server 360, and is treated as processed mail information.

Then, the process returns from step S440 and step S450 to step S410.

Then, in order for the third-party users C and D to view the published mail information, the public server 370 is requested to publish using the public page viewing application. The publishing server 370 requested to publish takes out the mail information publishing page managed by the page management unit 160 and sends the publishing page data to the publishing page browsing application by the page publishing unit 170. By doing so, users C and D can browse the published information.

(Second Embodiment) FIG. 9 shows a second embodiment of the present invention.
It is a functional block diagram of the electronic mail processing program concerning the embodiment. FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a configuration of the first embodiment shown in FIG. 3, in which a publication period management unit 510 for managing a period for newly publishing an e-mail and whether the e-mail has arrived at the e-mail server. An interval management unit 520 that manages a time interval at which the search is performed is added.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a flow of processing performed by the control unit 110 in the public server 370 in the second embodiment.

The control unit 110 performs the processing shown in FIG. 6 for each time interval managed by the interval management unit 520.
This processing is performed until all e-mails of the mail server 360 are processed (steps S410 to S4).
50) is the same as in the first embodiment, and a description thereof will not be repeated.

After all e-mails have been processed, it is determined in step S410 that there is no unprocessed e-mail, so the process proceeds to step S610.

In step S610, the page management unit 160
It checks whether the e-mail described on the e-mail publication page managed by the company has passed the publication period managed by the publication period management unit 510.

If the expiration date is found, the flow advances to step S620 to delete the expired e-mail, recreate the page in the public page creation unit 150, and store it in the page management unit 160. Will be fixed.

If no expiration date is found, the process is terminated.

As described above, according to the second embodiment, it is possible to check the arrival of an electronic mail and delete old data.

(Third Embodiment) A conceptual diagram relating to an electronic mail processing program according to a third embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIG.
As in the embodiment of FIG. In addition, the information disclosure route is the same route as the first embodiment shown in FIG. Also, the processing procedure is as shown in FIG.
The other processing is the same as that of the first embodiment except that the condition matching determination processing in step S430 is different from that of the first embodiment. Therefore, only the condition determination processing in step S430 will be described here.

FIG. 11 is an ABNF notation showing the specification of a language expressing the filtering conditions used in the third embodiment.

FIG. 12 is a description example of a filtering condition. This example shows that the caller is equal to A or the caller is "General Affairs"
If the message contains the string "Notification" and the message does not include the string "Confidential" in the body, the message will be published in the form "Notification Format" Publish on location. "It is shown that.

FIG. 13 is a diagram showing a data structure used when the filtering condition management unit 130 specifies the condition of FIG. As shown in this figure, the conditions are managed by a tree structure.

The filtering condition determination unit 140 determines whether each mail satisfies the condition by following the nodes of the tree structure. For example, at the node N1510, the condition on the left side of the node is checked, and if true, the condition on the right side is checked and the result is set as the node result. If the left condition is false, the result of the node is false. Similarly, in the node N1520, the value of the field described on the left is obtained from the mail information obtaining unit 120,
If the value of the right node is included, the value of the node is set to true; otherwise, the value is set to false. In this way, if the value of the node at the top of the tree is true, it is determined that the target mail matches the condition.

As described above, according to the third embodiment, it is possible to specify an advanced e-mail extraction condition.

[0053]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the data to be disclosed to a third party sent as an e-mail can be disclosed to the public server without user's operation, there is an effect that unnecessary labor for disclosure can be reduced. is there.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a network configuration diagram according to a first embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a hardware configuration diagram in each terminal in the network.

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of an electronic mail processing program according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a filtering condition.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an association between devices according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a process performed in a control unit in the first embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a skeleton used to create a list page in the first embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a skeleton used to create a mail information page in the first embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a functional block diagram of an electronic mail processing program according to a second embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart illustrating a process performed in a control unit in the second embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating a grammar of a filtering condition according to the third embodiment.

FIG. 12 is a diagram illustrating an example of a filtering condition according to the third embodiment.

FIG. 13 is a diagram showing a data structure used when the filtering condition of FIG. 12 is designated.

[Explanation of symbols]

 110 control unit 120 mail information acquisition unit 130 filtering condition management unit 140 filtering condition determination unit 150 public page creation unit 160 page management unit 170 page publication unit 310 terminal A 311 CPU 312 ROM 313 RAM 314 CRT display 315 printer 316 interface device 317 bus 320 terminal B 330 terminal C 340 terminal D 350 network 360 mail server 370 public server 380 e-mail

Claims (12)

[Claims] A receiving means for receiving an e-mail from a mail server for transmitting / receiving an e-mail; a condition setting means for setting a condition for extracting a specific e-mail; and a condition set by the condition setting means. Extracting means for extracting a specific e-mail from the e-mail received by the receiving means, and a publishing means for publishing the e-mail extracted by the extracting means to a public area. E-mail processing device characterized. 2. A system according to claim 1, further comprising a converting unit configured to convert the electronic mail extracted by the extracting unit into a format for the public area, wherein the publicizing unit publishes the electronic mail converted by the converting unit. The electronic mail processing device according to claim 1, wherein: 3. An apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: interval setting means for setting a time interval; and updating means for updating the open area at each time interval set by the interval setting means. Email processing device. 4. An expiration date setting means for setting an expiration date of an e-mail, and a deletion means for deleting an e-mail whose expiration date set by the expiration date setting device from the disclosure area. The electronic mail processing device according to claim 1, wherein 5. The e-mail processing device according to claim 1, further comprising a reply unit for returning the e-mail not extracted by the extraction unit to the mail server. 6. The electronic mail processing device according to claim 1, wherein the extraction condition is one keyword or a combination of a plurality of keywords. 7. An e-mail processing system comprising a first terminal, a second terminal, a first server, and a second server, wherein the first terminal is the first terminal Sending an e-mail addressed to a terminal other than the above, the first server receives an e-mail from the first terminal, and the second server receives an e-mail from the first server Extracting a specific e-mail from the received e-mails based on a condition for extracting the specific e-mail, and publishing the extracted e-mail to a public area, wherein the second terminal An e-mail processing system that accesses the second server and receives information of an e-mail published in the public area. 8. The electronic mail according to claim 6, wherein the second server converts the extracted electronic mail into a format for the public area and publishes the converted electronic mail. Processing system. 9. The electronic mail processing system according to claim 6, wherein the second server updates the public area at set time intervals. 10. The e-mail processing system according to claim 6, wherein the second server deletes the e-mail for which the set expiration date of the e-mail has passed from the public area. 11. The electronic mail processing system according to claim 6, wherein the second server returns an unextracted electronic mail to the first server. 12. The electronic mail processing system according to claim 6, wherein the extraction condition is one keyword or a combination of a plurality of keywords.