Patent Application
20090150500
The disclosed system relates generally to electronic mail systems, and more specifically to a method and system for automatically generating request-specific backup contact information in an out of office message.
As it is generally known, electronic mail (“e-mail”) is a store and forward messaging technology for composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. E-mail is asynchronous and does not require the receiver of a message to be online at the time the message is sent or received. Messages are exchanged between hosts using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) with software programs called mail transport agents. Users can download their messages from servers with standard protocols such as the POP or IMAP protocols, or using proprietary protocols.
Existing e-mail systems enable a user to define an out of office message that is automatically sent as a reply to messages received during time periods when the user has indicated that he or she is not able to respond. However, as explained in detail below, existing systems do not effectively provide out of office messages for users having multiple job responsibilities.
When a user has multiple responsibilities, each different responsibility will likely have a different set of one or more alternative contacts to be used when the user is unavailable. Existing systems necessitate that the user's out of office message include a potentially lengthy list of all such alternative contacts, with indications of which of the user's responsibilities is associated with which specific contact.
For example, assuming User A has the following responsibilities:
a) technical lead for a new product design and architecture,
b) point of contact for open source questions and issues,
c) support for an existing instant messaging component, and
d) president of a ski club.
User A's out of office message would need to contain backup contacts for all of the above responsibilities. Accordingly, when another user, e.g. User X, sends an e-mail message to User A while User A is out of the office, User X would be automatically sent an out of office e-mail message with the whole list of contact information. Such a message might, for example, be as follows:
“I will be out of office from Jan. 2, 2007 till Jan. 20, 2007. Please contact
1) User B for new product architecture and design questions & issues,
2) User C for open source questions & issues,
3) User D for instant messaging component questions & issues, and
4) User E for ski club activities.”
When User X receives the above out of office message, he or she has to go through the complete backup contact list to determine which user to contact for his or her particular need. It would accordingly be desirable to have a new system that allows User X to receive a customized out of office message containing only the backup contact information that is appropriate for their request.
One existing system (see http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/9559.html) outlines a method for using rules/filters to set up an out of office message. In another existing system (see U.S. patent application publication 2005/0021636), incoming e-mail is identified as either internal or external, and different out of office messages may be sent to internal and external users based that identification. These previous solutions allow a user to customize their out of office message based on filters and rules. Filters and rules in these previous systems send different “out of office” messages to selected other users or to internal and external users. However, these systems do not alleviate the problem of users receiving a lengthy out of office message in which they must sift through a lengthy list of backup contacts in order to find the appropriate person to help them with the subject of their original message. Existing systems do not provide any way to generate an out of office message that includes specific backup contact information that matches the type of inquiry that was received.
To address the above described and other shortcomings of previous techniques, a method and system are disclosed for automatically generating request-specific backup contact information in an out of office electronic mail message. The disclosed system automatically generates an out of office message with specific backup contact information based on an automatically determined correspondence between the contents of a received e-mail message and one or more specific, pre-defined responsibilities of the user that the received e-mail message is addressed to.
The disclosed system generates a graphical user interface including a user interface object that allows a user to specify one or more keywords for each different one of their roles/responsibilities, and to also specify corresponding backup contact information for each role/responsibility. The input keywords and contact information are persistently stored, e.g. in the form of a table.
When the out of office feature of the disclosed system is enabled by the user, incoming e-mail messages are analyzed to detect the user's keywords. Text analysis and information retrieval techniques may be used to analyze the subject and/or contents of a received message to locate keywords. When keywords are detected, they are used to identify one or more corresponding roles/responsibilities in the persistent storage. Based on this detection of keywords in the received message and the correspondence of the detected keywords with role/responsibility back up contact information in the persistent storage, only relevant backup contact information is retrieved and included in the automatically generated out of office reply generated for the received e-mail message.
In order to facilitate a fuller understanding of the present invention, reference is now made to the appended drawings. These drawings should not be construed as limiting the present invention, but are intended to be exemplary only.
During operation of the embodiment shown in
Each user responsibility is stored in the Backup Contact Information Table 20 together with the keywords and backup contact information associated with it. The Backup Contact Information Table 20 is organized such that the backup contact information for a given user responsibility can be retrieved (e.g. by the Out of Office Message Generation Logic 18) based on one or more keywords that are associated with that user responsibility.
During operation of the illustrative embodiment shown in
The Client Systems 14 and 32 of
Those skilled in the art will further recognize that E-mail Client 16 may be embodied using software or firmware, such as computer application program code, operating system program code, middleware, and/or wholly or partly using digital hardware components, such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and the like, and/or combinations of hardware and/or software or firmware. Those skilled in the art will further recognize that the Client Systems 14 and 32 may each include one or more processors, and program storage, such as memory, for storing program code executable on such processors, as well as input/output devices and/or interfaces. In the example of
While for purposes of concise illustration only two client systems and respective users are shown in
In addition, while the illustrative embodiment of
At step 54, the disclosed system persistently stores the input user responsibilities with their corresponding keyword sets and backup contact information sets (e.g. in Backup Contact Information Table 20 of
Subsequently, during the time period defined at step 56, an e-mail message addressed to the user is received from a remote user at step 58. The disclosed system responds to receipt of the e-mail message at step 58 by searching the received message (e.g. subject line, body, etc.) at step 60 for words, terms, phrases, etc. that match any of the keywords in the keyword sets input at step 52. For each word matching a keyword, the disclosed system operates at step 62 the disclosed system finds the backup contact information for the user responsibility associated with the keyword. The backup contact information found at step 62 is then inserted or otherwise added to an out of office e-mail message generated at step 64. The out of office e-mail message generated at step 64 is then transmitted at step 66 to the remote user that sent the message received at step 58.
Within the third tab 106, a table of user editable fields is provided having rows corresponding to individual user responsibilities. A column 108 defines the user responsibility for each row. A column 110 defines keywords for each user responsibility, and the columns 112 and 114 define the backup contact information for each user responsibility. Specifically, column 112 defines the backup contact name for each user responsibility, and column 114 defines e-mail address and phone number information backup contact information.
During an example of operation of the illustrative embodiment shown in
“Carol Van Dyke will be out of the office from Jan. 2, 2007 till Jan. 20, 2007. Please contact Bob Jones (Bob_jones@company.com, 555-222-3335) for Open Source questions and issues.”
In another example, if a remote user sends an e-mail message to the local user asking for some input regarding an instant messaging component (e.g. “Is the IM component release ready?” contained in the message body), the disclosed system would generate and transmit an out of office message to the remote user such as the following:
“I will be out of the office from Jan. 2, 2007 till Jan. 20, 2007. Please contact Ron Thompson (Ron_thompson@company.com, 555-222-3335) for Messaging and IM Component questions and/or issues.”
Whereas the above examples describe scenarios in which only one user responsibility is matched by a received message, the disclosed system is not limited in that regard. Accordingly, if a message is received that includes contents that matches keywords of multiple ones of the user's responsibilities, then backup contact information for all of the matched responsibilities may be included in the automatically generated out of office message sent as a response. Moreover, in the case where no keywords of any of the user's pre-defined responsibilities are found in the received message, then an out of office response message may be generated that includes all of the backup contact information for all of the user's responsibilities.
While the above description regarding illustrative embodiments of the disclosed system includes examples of specific user interface operations and/or display objects, such as may be provided using graphical buttons, menus, dialog boxes, and the like, the present invention is not limited to these specific examples. Accordingly, those skilled in the art will recognize that alternative embodiments may use any specific type or kind of user interface display object that may be appropriate to provide the specific operations described.
The disclosed system can take the form of an entirely software embodiment, an entirely hardware embodiment, or an embodiment containing both software and hardware elements. The figures include block diagram and flowchart illustrations of methods, apparatus(s) and computer program products according to an embodiment of the invention. It will be understood that each block in such figures, and combinations of these blocks, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus create means for implementing the functions specified in the block or blocks. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function specified in the block or blocks. The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the functions specified in the block or blocks.
Those skilled in the art should readily appreciate that programs defining the functions of the present invention can be delivered to a computer in many forms; including, but not limited to: (a) information permanently stored on non-writable storage media (e.g. read only memory devices within a computer such as ROM or CD-ROM disks readable by a computer I/O attachment); (b) information alterably stored on writable storage media (e.g. floppy disks and hard drives); or (c) information conveyed to a computer using wireless, baseband signaling or broadband signaling techniques, including carrier wave signaling techniques, such as over computer or telephone networks via a modem.
While the invention is described through the above exemplary embodiments, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that modification to and variation of the illustrated embodiments may be made without departing from the inventive concepts herein disclosed.
