The invention relates to electronic processing of mailpiece information, and more particularly to, providing electronic notification to a mailpiece recipient providing notification of a mailpiece deposited with a mail carrier for delivery.
In the past the production of mail required a number of steps that must be coordinated in order for all the elements to come together and to meet the postal service pickup deadlines and the mailer's distribution schedules. The ability to track the production floor operations was essential to ensure that service level agreements are met. This in turn drove a need to provide a way for a customer owning high-speed mailing equipment to transfer customer data from their equipment based on real-time measurements and data collection. The data collected then needed to be transferred typically over a localized network or over the internet to a data processing system.
In the past, the data collection mechanisms were independent elements and storage mechanisms, which often implemented incompatible and disconnected data sources that could not be brought together to provide an overall view of the mail processing processes. Typically, data was provided using dedicated programs and work stations requiring constant presence by the user on the work floor.
It was often typical, that customers of the postal carrier (e.g., mailers) had multiple mailing sites but had no means to aggregate the mail piece data from each of those sites. Additionally, some customers maintained mixed vendor shops each having a mailing system using mailing data that was incompatible relative to one another. Thus, the mailing data present at each of the aforementioned sites could not be aggregated between one another to enable a unified vie\v of all the customers mailing operations.
Further, it has proven desirable that a user (mail sender or recipient) may often find it necessary to review the details on a particular mail piece that has passed through a mailing system (e.g., the USPS). One such objective to do so would be to track and trace a mail piece using minimal information.
To accomplish this objective, tracking and tracing mail pieces required a unique identifier for each mail piece in order for it to recognized. However, the majority of mail pieces do not have such a unique identifier thus obviating tracking and tracing of such mail pieces. The United States Postal Service (USPS) did offer options (registered/certified mail) to provide individual mail tracking which was perfumed via optical scanning of the mailpiece as it progressed through the USPS. However, these options were costly and only provided tracking at the beginning and end of the postal distribution cycle and relied on the cumbersome process of having to integrate with the scanning of the mailpieces to provide mailpiece identification.
One prior art attempt to overcome the above deficiencies in tracking individual mail pieces was to assign a unique code to each mail piece (e.g., on mail pieces envelope). This approach is currently is use by various private carriers (e.g., FedEx, UPS, etc.). However, this approach is deficient in that the unique code is not shared amongst various postal couriers and requires significant investment by each private carrier to utilize it's own unique codes (e.g., requires infrastructures of scanners dedicated for it's unique code).
Additionally, there was no known method for identifying mailpieces and the contents of a mailpiece prior to its processing in the USPS (since optical scanning of the mailpiece was required) so as to provide notification to an intended recipient regarding the impending mailpiece delivery. If presented with this mailpiece information, the recipient may then instruct the USPS to modify, change or cancel the impending delivery of the mailpiece before the mailpiece even begins processing in the USPS.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a mail carrier (e.g., the USPS) the ability to provide electronic notification to an intended mailpiece recipient regarding the impending mailpiece delivery prior to the processing of the mailpiece in the mail carrier system so that an intended mailpiece recipient may instruct the USPS to modify, change or cancel the impending delivery of the mailpiece before the mailpiece begins processing in the USPS.
The present invention relates to a method for providing electronic mailpiece notification to a mailpiece recipient prior to physical delivery of the mailpiece from a postal carrier mailpiece delivery system. The present invention method includes the step of providing a database that is accessible by the postal carrier system containing a mailpiece recipient's prescribed mailpiece addressee information and preferred electronic communication channel for receiving the advanced notification regarding a mailpiece being processed for delivery to the mailpiece recipient.
A postal carrier system receives information, preferably from a mailer and in electronic form, indicating the subject matter for each mailpiece that is deposited with the postal carrier for delivery to mailpiece recipients along with preferably the name of the intended recipient printed upon each mailpiece along with preferably the postnet (or other identifier printed on the mailpiece) for each intended recipient. It is noted that this information is received in the postal carrier system without requiring optical scanning of a mailpiece, thus there in no need to interfere, or integrate with, the optical scanning equipment used by the postal carrier system for processing mailpieces. Thus, the present invention method is independent of any scanning procedures used in a postal carrier system for acquiring addressee information form a mailpiece.
A determination is then performed as to whether the addressee information present on a mailpiece deposited for delivery with a postal carrier system matches a recipient's addressee information prescribed in the database. When a match is determined, an electronic notification is sent to the mailpiece recipient via the prescribed at least one communication channel notifying the mailpiece recipient of the subject matter of the mailpiece that is to be processed or is currently being processed for delivery to the recipient in the postal carrier system.
The above and other objects of the present invention will be apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout, and in which:
As will be described below, the present invention provides a method wherein a recipient who receives mail delivery from a postal carrier system (e.g., the United States Postal Service (USPS)) can subscribe to a service wherein the postal carrier system will provide them with advanced notification regarding the contents and/or subject of the mailpiece that is currently being processed for delivery or has been deposited with the postal carrier system for delivery to an intended recipient. For ease of description and point of reference purposes,
Referenced generally by numeral 10 in
Recipient 10 is shown to include a PC 10, which amongst other capabilities, is capable of sending and receiving email messages via the Internet 15. It is of course to be appreciated that it is understood that there are a plurality of recipients who receive their mailpiece delivery from postal carrier 20, but for ease of illustration, only a single recipient 10 is depicted. Also, the method for physically delivering mailpieces from postal carrier system 20 to recipient 10 is well known and need not be further described in any detail.
Postal carrier system 20 preferably includes a database 25 and computer system 28 that are preferably configured to provide the necessary software for storing data relating to recipient prescribed preferences for receiving advanced notification of mailpieces, as discussed in further detail below. It is to be appreciated that each mailpiece delivered by postal carrier system 10 includes printed on it at least one unique identifier. An example of such a unique identifier can be a barcode designating the region of mailpiece delivery for the intended recipient. Typically this barcode is known as the postnet barcode, which is well known and also does need to be further described in detail. Additionally, a mailpiece may include another barcode known as a “Planet Code.” The Planet Code is an additional barcode that is part of the Confirm program from the United States Postal Service. The Confirm service tracks Planet Codes every time they pass through a barcode sorter. The Planet Code identifies the mailer, and the scanning data is transmitted to account holders to notify them as to where in the delivery process the mailpiece is presently located. The Planet Code service does not provide any notification to a mailpiece recipient relating to the contents of mailpieces.
Additionally shown in
To provide enhanced delivery of its generated mailpieces, a mailer 30 preferably provides to postal carrier system 20 an electronic file (e.g., a mail.dat file) preferably including specific information relating to each mailpiece delivered to the postal carrier system 20 from mailer 30. For purposes of describing the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the aforesaid electronic file will hereinafter be referred to as a mail.dat file. Preferably, each mailpiece contained in the corresponding mailrun has an electronic record created for it in the mail.dat file, as set forth further described below. It is to be appreciated that a mail.dat file is a current mailing industry standard for transferring information about mailpieces from one mailing program (e.g., the mailer 30) to another mailing program (e.g., the postal carrier system 20). The mail.dat file is preferably used by the postal carrier system 20 for electronic acceptance, verification and payment purposes. Amongst other information, the mail.dat file preferably includes a respective record containing the postnet, addressee name and subject matter information relating to the contents of a mailpiece for each mailpiece provided in a mail run and recorded in the corresponding mail.dat file.
With the system components relating to the present invention method being described above, the method of the present invention for providing advanced notification of the contents of a mailpiece to a recipient will now be described.
With reference now to
It is noted that while step 210 specifies that a recipient prescribe an email address for receiving advanced notification of a mailpiece to be delivered, it is to be understood that other types of electronic communication channels may be utilized for providing this notification (e.g., a telephony message, facsimile message, pager message, wireless SMS message (i.e., txt message), etc.) Further, it is to be understood that a recipient may prescribe more than one type of a communication channel. For example, a recipient may desire to receive both an email message and a txt message providing notification of the subject matter of mailpiece being delivered. However, for ease of description, only an email communication channel is discussed below in conjunction with the described preferred embodiment.
With the steps discussing how a recipient 10 subscribes to receive advanced notification regarding the contents of a mailpiece being described above, the steps for providing the advanced mailpiece notification to the recipient 10 will now be discussed. With reference to
Next, in the computer system 28 associated with the postal carrier system 30, the first mailpiece record for preferably the first mailpiece contained in mail.dat file stored in database 25 is accessed to retrieve the postnet barcode, addresses name and subject matter associated with this accessed mailpiece file, step 330. A determination is then made in computer system 28 to determine whether the accessed postnet barcode (via step 330) has been prescribed in postal carrier system database 25 by a subscribing recipient (via step 230), step 340. If yes, then a determination is made as to whether, in addition to the retrieved postnet barcode, is the corresponding retrieved addressee name (via step 330) also prescribed in the database 25 by a subscribing recipient (via step 210), step 350. And if yes, then the postal carrier computer system 28 preferably retrieves the prescribed email address stored in database 25 that is associated with the accessed postnet barcode (via step 210), step 360. Next, an email message is compiled and sent from postal carrier computer system 28 to the retrieved email address (via step 360) associated and prescribed by the subscribing recipient indicating at least that a mailpiece is currently being processed for delivery in the postal carrier system 20 and that the subject matter of this mailpiece relates to the subject matter information listed in the mail.dat file that corresponds to the aforesaid accessed postnet barcode that was retrieved from the mail.dat file (via step 330), step 370. An example of such a message is shown in
A determination is then made as to whether the aforesaid accessed mailpiece record from mail.dat file was the last record contained therein, step 380. If no, then the above described process then repeats starting at step 330. Also, if in step 340 it was determined that there is no matching postnet barcode, or in step 350 that there was no matching addressee name, then the aforesaid determination for a last mailpiece record at step 380 is performed.
In the drawings-and specification, there have been disclosed a typical preferred embodiment of the invention, and although specific terms are employed, the terms are used in a descriptive sense only and not for purposes of limitation. The invention has been described in detail with specific reference to these illustrated embodiments. It will be apparent, however, that various modifications and changes can be made within the spirit and scope of the invention as described in the foregoing specification and as defined in the appended claims.