Patent Application
20070027953
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic mailbox address book sharing system and a method for the same and, more particularly, to an address book sharing system and a method for sharing an address book with other computers.
2. Description of Related Art
Along with the development of the Internet, transmission of network information is substantially replacing transmission of conventional written documents. Among the transmission techniques of network information, E-mail is the most popular, and is widely used by various companies, families and individuals. The reason why E-mail is much appreciated is that it can provide convenient, quick and borderless communication. The contents can include multimedia information and can be transmitted to a large number of receivers. These advantages make E-mail an indispensable transmission medium in the information era.
For address books used in existent electronic mailboxes such as Outlook Express from Microsoft Inc., a computer user is allowed to build his own address book and also allowed to arbitrarily add, delete or modify the contents and data of this address book. For a company, however, the data of address books in computers of its employees are very important, because the address books can record private mailing lists of the employees and also mailing lists of important customers of the company. The safety of the mailing lists of these important customers is in doubt, because anyone can add to, delete from, or otherwise modify the mailing lists. In particular, when an employee leaves a company, he can easily delete the mailing lists of important customers of the company in the address book, hence causing the company much trouble. Besides, the address book in each computer is separately accessed but cannot be shared with other computers.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic mailbox address book sharing system and a method for the same so that mailing lists recorded in an address book can be shared with other computers. This address book can provide determination of access permissions to enhance the safety of data stored therein.
To achieve the above object, the present invention provides an electronic mailbox address book sharing system, which comprises an electronic mail server and a plurality of client computers. The electronic mail server has an address book. These client computers log into the electronic mail server via a network. The electronic mail server provides access to and use of the address book to these client computers.
The present invention also provides an electronic mailbox address book sharing method, which comprises the steps of: providing an electronic mail server with an address book; providing a plurality of client computers that log into the electronic mail server via a network; and using the electronic mail server to provide access to and use of the address book to the client computers when the client computers log into the electronic mail server.
By using the electronic mailbox address book sharing system and the method for the same, the address book can be stored in the electronic mail server, and the client computers can log into the electronic mail server to read the address book, thereby sharing the data of the address book.
The various objects and advantages of the present invention will be more readily understood from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended drawing, in which:
The internal mail management of a company is usually accomplished by using an electronic mail server to send and receive mail. The address book of customer name lists is usually stored in each client computer. The address book cannot be shared, and is difficult to manage. In consideration of the above factors, the present invention builds the address book in an electronic mail server for overall planning and management.
As shown in
In this embodiment, the electronic mail server 10 is an Internet protocol mail server. When the present invention is used, each client computer 21 can log into the electronic mail server 10 via the network 20, and address data stored in the electronic mail server 10 can be shared with each client computer 21. The client computers in the branch companies 33 can also log into the electronic mail server 10 via the network 30, and address data stored in the electronic mail server 10 can be shared with the client computers of the branch companies 33.
In this embodiment, the electronic mail server 10 has a permission granting module 11, a full-text search module 13 and an address book 15. The address book 15 further includes a public address book database 151 and a plurality of private address book database 153. The public address book database 151 stores shared mailing lists of public address book data that can be read by each client computer 21 and the client computers of the branch companies. The private address book database 153 stores private mailing lists of private address book data. Each client computer or each client computer of the branch companies corresponds to a private address book database 153, and each client computer has its own exclusive private address book.
The permission granting module 11 can grant client computers permission to access data stored in the public address book database 151 and the private address book database 153 in the address book 15. Different levels of access include reading access, adding access, modifying access and/or deleting access. The permission granting module 11 identifies a client computer through the name of the client computer. When the permission granting module 11 performs content setting, the electronic mail server 10 asks the logging-in client computer to input a password. The client computer can access the contents of the permission granting module 11 only if the input password is correct. In this embodiment, each client computer is set to have reading access and adding access to the public address book database 151 to achieve address book sharing. The permission granting module 11 sets each private address book database 153 to correspond to a client computer, which has reading access and adding access to the private address book database 153 and can store private address book data into the private address book database 153. The permission granting module 11 can also make all access to the address book 15 open to specific client computers for maintenance and management of data stored in the public address book database 151 and the private address book databases 153.
On the other hand, when there is a great deal of address data stored in the address book 15, searching for address data in one list after another takes a lot of time. The full-text search module 13 allows the user to set search conditions for finding matched data in the public address book database 151.
When the permission setting option 412 is selected for execution, the client computer is asked to input a password for the electronic mail server 10 to determine whether the user of the client computer has permission to change the set content of the permission granting module 11. If the input password is correct, the frame of
In
To sum up, the present invention provides an electronic mailbox address book sharing system and a method for the same. Public and private mailing lists in address data are stored in the electronic mail server 10. Every client computer can log into the electronic mail server 10 for access (e.g., reading, adding, modifying and deleting) to address data, hence accomplishing address book sharing. Besides, in order to ensure the safety and integrity of data stored in the address book 15 in the electronic mail server 10, not every client computer can read or edit data in the address book 15 in the electronic mail server 10. Instead, the permission granting module 11 is used to provide a decision mechanism. Only the client computers having permission can read or edit address data stored in the address book 15 in the electronic mail server 10.
Although the present invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the details thereof. Various substitutions and modifications have been suggested in the foregoing description, and other will occur to those of ordinary skill in the art. Therefore, all such substitutions and modifications are intended to be embraced within the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.
