JPH11239168A - Electronic mail device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an electronic mail device which can efficiently manage electronic mail having the same content addressed to a plurality of persons. SOLUTION: An electronic mail device is provided with a transmitter managing means 1 which manages the senders of transmitted electronic mail, an external storage device 2 which stores the contents of the electronic mail, and a sendee managing means 12 which manages the sendees of the electronic mail. The above device discriminates whether or not the sender of received electronic mail is registered in the managing means 1. When the sender is registered in the managing means 1, the device compares the content of the received electronic mail with the contents of electronic mail stored in the storage device 2 and, when the content coincides with the content of one of the electronic mail stored in the storage device 2, the device registers the sendee of the received electronic mail in the sendee managing means 12 and, at the same time, scraps the received electronic mail.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail apparatus, and more particularly to an electronic mail apparatus for efficiently managing mails of the same content addressed to a plurality of clients.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, computer networks have become widespread in companies and schools, and various types of information have been exchanged using electronic mail. In addition, computers have become widespread in ordinary households, and providers that provide an Internet connection service and further provide an e-mail service have appeared one after another.

An advantage of electronic mail is that information can be transmitted and received more quickly and easily than ordinary paper mail. In addition, when exchanging information using a telephone or the like, when exchanging information between a person who provides information and a person who receives information, the exchanging is performed if the other party's convenience (various circumstances that cannot be dealt with) is bad. There is a drawback that you can not.
On the other hand, the e-mail has an advantage that if the e-mail is transmitted, the contents of the transmitted e-mail can be viewed when the other party is convenient.

[0004] In addition, in order to notify the same contents of information to a plurality of persons, it is necessary to make copies of the number of copies to be sent and to enter addresses for the number of persons sending the mail, which is troublesome. There are drawbacks. In addition, information exchange by telephone is basically one-to-one communication. In order to notify the same information to a plurality of persons, the operation of calling and informing the contents must be repeated by the number of persons. It is troublesome.

On the other hand, in the case of electronic mail, the same electronic mail is transmitted to a plurality of persons simply by a sender creating one electronic mail and designating an address to a person who wants to send the same by carbon copy or the like. . An e-mail having such advantages is used for a mailing list or the like in which a plurality of people need to share the same information.

[0006]

When an e-mail with the same content is transmitted to a plurality of clients under the same mail server by a mailing list or the like,
The mail server stores all e-mails for the number of received clients in an external storage device. In other words, the same e-mail was stored as different data for different recipients. For this reason, if a large file is attached to the e-mail, it is necessary to prepare a large free space in the external storage device to store the e-mail for the number of recipients. There is a problem that the scale of the apparatus becomes extremely large and inefficient.

[0007] The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide an electronic mail apparatus capable of efficiently managing electronic mails having the same contents addressed to a plurality of persons.

[0008]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides a sender managing means for managing a sender of a transmitted e-mail, and a storage means for storing the contents of the e-mail. Comprising a receiver means for managing a recipient of the e-mail, determining whether a sender of the received e-mail is registered in the sender management means, if it is registered, Comparing the content of the received email with the content of the email stored in the storage means,
If they are the same, the receiver of the received e-mail is registered in the receiver management means, and the received e-mail is discarded. Further, the present invention is characterized in that the receiver management means is provided corresponding to each receiver. Also, the present invention is characterized in that, when an e-mail device receives an e-mail pickup request from a recipient, the e-mail device searches the recipient management means, copies the e-mail stored in the storage means, and Handed over to a person. Further, the present invention is characterized in that, when the electronic mail device delivers the electronic mail to the recipient, the electronic device deletes the information registered in the recipient manager.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, an electronic mail device according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an electronic mail device according to one embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, 1 is a mail server,
An electronic mail service is provided to a plurality of clients 31 and 32. The mail server 1 and clients 31 and 32 as recipients are connected via a connection line E1 such as Ethernet. Further, the mail server 1 is connected to an external storage device 2 for storing electronic mail to be delivered to the clients 31 and 32. This external storage device is, for example, a storage device having a hard disk or the like, and is connected to the mail server 1 via a connection line E2 such as Ethernet. The external storage device 2 may be provided in the mail server 1.

The mail server 1 has a means 11 for managing a sender of the e-mail addressed to each client managed by the mail server 1 and a means 12 for managing a recipient of the e-mail. Next, the means 11 for managing the sender of the e-mail and the means 12 for managing the recipient of the e-mail will be described in detail with reference to FIG.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining the means 11 for managing the sender of the e-mail and the means 12 for managing the recipient of the e-mail provided in the mail server 1 in FIG. In FIG. 2, reference numerals 51, 52, and 53 denote three e-mails stored in the external storage device 2 in FIG. These e-mails 51, 52 and 53 are e-mails of different contents sent from the same sender A, respectively.

The e-mail 51 is addressed to the client 31, the e-mail 53 is addressed to the client 32, and the e-mail 52 is the same mail addressed to both the clients 31 and 32. The mail server 1 has a sender list 41 indicating that the email is from the specific sender A. This sender list 41 corresponds to the sender management means in FIG. In the present embodiment, the means 11 for managing the sender is realized by providing the sender list 41.

Further, as a means for managing the recipient in FIG.
It has a recipient list 61 indicating that the email is addressed to the client 31 and a recipient list 62 indicating that the email is addressed to the client 32. In the present embodiment, the means 11 for managing recipients is realized by providing sender lists 61 and 62.

In FIG. 2, the e-mail 51 is a sender A
This is an e-mail sent to the client 31 from. Therefore, the sender of the e-mail 51 (here, the sender A) is registered in the sender list 41. Further, information that the electronic mail 51 is addressed to the client 31 is registered in the recipient list 61. Email 53 is sender A
This is the electronic mail addressed to the client 32 transmitted from. Therefore, the sender (here, sender A) is registered in the sender list 41. Further, information that the electronic mail 53 is addressed to the client 32 is registered in the recipient list 62.

The electronic mail 52 is the same mail sent from the sender A to the clients 31 and 32. Therefore, the sender (here, sender A) is registered in the sender list 41. Information that the electronic mail 52 is addressed to the clients 31 and 32 is registered in the recipient lists 61 and 62. As described above, in the present embodiment, the mail server 1 determines, for each of the sender list 41 and the recipient lists 61 and 62, information on the sender of the transmitted e-mail and who And information on whether or not to distribute.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described in detail with reference to FIGS. FIG. 3 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the present embodiment. In the present embodiment, an e-mail 51 addressed to the client 31 and an e-mail 5 addressed to the client 32 are stored in the mail server 1 in FIG.
The operation when the electronic mail 52 having the same content arrives at the clients 31 and 32 as shown in FIG. At this time, client 3
Assume that email 52 to 1 arrives first and email 52 to client 32 arrives later.

First, the mail server 1 is connected to the client 31
Mail server 1 receives the e-mail 52 for
Specifies the sender A from the mail 52 (step S1).
0). Next, the mail server 1 searches whether or not the sender A specified in step S10 is registered in the sender list 41. That is, whether or not another electronic mail from the sender A has arrived is searched.

In the present embodiment, it is assumed that the e-mails 51 and 53 have arrived from the sender A, and the case where the e-mail 52 has arrived has been described. A process of comparing the contents of the mails 51 and 53 and the mail 52 is performed (step S12). Next, in step S14, it is determined whether there is an e-mail having the same content. Step S14
Is "No", that is, if it is determined that there is no e-mail with the same content, the process proceeds to step S16.

In step S16, a process for registering the electronic mail 52 in the sender list 41 is performed. Step S
When the process of No. 16 is completed, the process proceeds to step S18, and a process of registering in the recipient list 61 of the client 31 as the recipient is performed. When the above process is completed, a process of storing the received e-mail 52 in the external storage device 2 is performed (Step S20). This completes one process.

Next, the mail server 1 is connected to the client 32
Upon receiving the electronic mail 52 addressed to, the mail server 1
The sender A is specified from the mail 52 (step S1).
0). Next, the mail server 1 searches whether or not the sender A specified in step S10 is registered in the sender list 41. That is, whether or not another electronic mail from the sender A has arrived is searched.

In the present embodiment, it is assumed that the e-mails 51 and 53 have arrived from the sender A, and the case where the e-mail 52 has arrived has been described. A process of comparing the contents of the mails 51 and 53 and the mail 52 is performed (step S12).

Next, in step S14, it is determined whether or not there are electronic mails having the same contents. In the present embodiment, as described above, the e-mail 52
Has arrived first and has been stored in the external storage device 2, so that the determination result in step S14 is "Yes", that is, it is determined that there is an e-mail with the same content. In this case, the process proceeds to step S22.

In step S22, a process for registering in the recipient list 62 that there is an e-mail 52 whose storage has been completed is performed. When the process in step S22 is completed, the process proceeds to step S24, in which a process of discarding the received mail, in this example, the electronic mail 52 transmitted from the sender A to the client 32 is performed. Here, the discarding process means a process in which the electronic mail 52 transmitted from the sender A to the client 32 is not stored in the external storage device 2. This completes one process.

Next, the operation when there is a request to deliver an electronic mail from each of the clients 31, 32 will be described. First, when there is a request from the client 31, the mail server 1 searches the contents of the recipient list 61. In the present embodiment, the recipient list 61 includes
Since it is registered that the electronic mail 51 and the electronic mail 52 have been transmitted, the mail server 1 delivers the electronic mails 51 and 52 to the client 31. At this time,
When the e-mail 52 is delivered, the contents of the e-mail 52 are copied and delivered.

Next, when there is a request from the client 32, the mail server 1 searches the contents of the recipient list 62. In the present embodiment, since the e-mail 52 and the e-mail 53 have been registered in the recipient list 62, the mail server 1 delivers the e-mails 52 and 53 to the client 32. At this time, when the e-mail 52 is delivered, the contents of the e-mail 52 are copied and delivered.

As described above, in the present embodiment, when an e-mail of the same content is received from the same sender, the e-mail to be saved is only an e-mail addressed to a certain person, and other e-mails are stored. The e-mail to the client is discarded, and the reception is registered in the recipient list. Further, when there is a request for receipt of an e-mail from each client, the contents of the e-mail are copied and delivered. Therefore, when receiving the same e-mail from the same sender, there is no need to store each e-mail, and the same e-mail addressed to a plurality of persons can be efficiently managed.

When the e-mail is delivered to the client, the fact that the e-mail has been transmitted may be deleted from the recipient lists 61 and 62. When an e-mail of the same content from the same sender is delivered to all clients, the e-mail (FIG. 2)
In this example, the electronic mail 52) may be deleted.

[0029]

As described above, according to the present invention, when an electronic mail having the same content arrives at a plurality of recipients to an electronic mail device, a plurality of recipient information for receiving the electronic mail are transmitted. By managing, the content of the e-mail itself is stored in the storage device for only one e-mail. Therefore, when managing e-mails using the e-mail device, the amount of storage used can be reduced, and e-mails having the same contents addressed to several people can be efficiently managed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an electronic mail device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a means 11 for managing a sender of an e-mail and a means 12 for managing a recipient of an e-mail provided in the mail server 1 in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the present embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 2 External storage device (storage means) 11 Sender management means (sender management means) 12 Recipient management means (recipient management means)

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A sender management unit for managing a sender of a sent e-mail, a storage unit for storing the contents of the e-mail, and a receiver unit for managing a recipient of the e-mail. Then, it is determined whether or not the sender of the received e-mail is registered in the sender management means. If the sender is registered, the contents of the received e-mail and the e-mail stored in the storage means are determined. Compare the contents and if they are the same,
An e-mail device, wherein a recipient of the received e-mail is registered in the recipient management means, and the received e-mail is discarded. 2. The e-mail apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said recipient management means is provided for each recipient. 3. The e-mail device, when receiving an e-mail request from a recipient, searches the recipient management means, copies the e-mail stored in the storage means, and 2. The e-mail device according to claim 1, wherein the e-mail device is delivered. 4. The electronic mail according to claim 3, wherein the electronic mail device deletes information registered in the receiver manager when the electronic mail is delivered to the recipient. apparatus.