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Description  |
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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic mail arrangements
and, more particularly, to display of confirmation of delivery information
regarding electronic mail messages.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The development of computer networks and the ability for digital
communication between data processors over communication utilities such as
telephone links has enabled new forms of communication such as the
transmission of documents by facsimile and electronic mail. Electronic
mail, at its most basic, merely calls for the transmission of a digital,
usually encoded, file from one data processor terminal to another and
storage at the receiving terminal. At any time thereafter, the operator of
the receiving terminal may call the message from memory for display,
printing or any other available function available for action on a local
file, including forwarding to another terminal with or without
modification of the text. In order to alert a recipient that a message has
arrived, it is also common to provide for automatic display of messages in
regard to any electronic mail which is received. Further, menu-driven
electronic mail processing functions are now relatively common.
Since any data processing function can be performed on the text of
electronic mail, the nature of the transmitted file is irrelevant, as long
as it is susceptible of digital transmission. Therefore electronic mail
may include graphical images in digitized form as is done by facsimile
machines or scanners. As used herein, the term "electronic mail" will be
used as comprehending all types of digital files which can be sent between
data processor terminals based upon addresses of either users, terminals
or other network addresses (e.g. nodes).
Because of wide variety of files which may be transmitted in this manner by
merely specifying an address and the functions which can be performed
thereon or in response thereto, including automatic functions, electronic
mail has become extremely popular and volume in some networks is quite
substantial. It has been found that electronic mail is an effective
business management and information dissemination tool. In such a context,
it has become common to provide for mailing lists under the control of
each terminal in order to facilitate the transmission of an electronic
mail (hereinafter "e-mail") file to a plurality of addressees. These
mailing lists may be arbitrarily large. Therefore, a single e-mail file
may be greatly multiplied, in effect (a file may not be physically
multiplied within a node of the system, but only made accessible to
certain addressable terminals on that node), in accordance with the number
of addressees on a particular mailing list. The message may be further
multiplied by each addressee as copies are saved, forwarded (with or
without addition, notation or editing) or otherwise acted upon by the
addressee. This multiplication of the e-mail file may continue to any
arbitrary degree during the dissemination of the message.
A common facility provided in e-mail systems is the ability to
automatically generate acknowledgements, commonly referred to as
confirmation of delivery (COD) messages, at the will of the sender.
Usually, the automatic generation of an acknowledgement requires only the
insertion of a short combination of characters in a line of the message.
When this code is encountered when the file is retrieved by an addressee,
the acknowledgement, often including the user identification (user ID) and
the date and time of access, is generated and sent as a separate e-mail
message to the sender. At the sender terminal, information in the COD
message is formatted with a locally stored form message for display to the
sender. Thus the sender can know when the message is actually received by
calling the acknowledgement e-mail file. Acknowledgements may also be
generated from other mail functions available to the user such as file
(store), print, delete, etc. and the particular mail function generating
the acknowledgement can also be reported to the sender. Other automatic
acknowledgement functions are also available, such as acknowledgement of
receipt and storage by a node so that the e-mail file is at least
available to the addressee. Another possible stage of acknowledgement may
be when a message indicating the notification of the addressee by an
automatically generated message. In short, any incident of delivery of an
e-mail file may be separately reported automatically to the sender.
However, these acknowledgement e-mail messages, of course, are individual
messages since they are individually generated upon each access or
automatic function performed in response to the existence of received
e-mail. Generation of these acknowledgements may be made to follow a file
throughout the entirety of the dissemination of the message. Therefore,
the volume of acknowledgement messages may easily become quite large.
Consider a worldwide data processing network in which an executive wished
to transmit a message concerning, say, an implementation of a new company
policy to the managers of a particular department at all installations in
Europe and the United States and to have the message distributed through
three supervisory levels below the manager through the nested distribution
lists at each supervisory level. This degree of message dissemination,
possibly involving even more nested distribution lists than the sender may
know (if individual addressees have specified automatic distribution
lists), might include as many as ten thousand individuals or, potentially,
many more. If implementation of this policy would be effective upon
receipt of the message, the manager would wish to track receipt of the
message in order to determine implementation of the new policy. In the
prior art, there has been no provision for reporting of acknowledgements
other than on an individual basis, thus potentially requiring the sender
to sift through as many acknowledgement messages as the number of
addressees to whom the message was sent. Even viewing a listing of
recipients is a tedious process under such circumstances and providing
more individual information than is likely to be useful. More likely, the
executive may want to know, instead, the percentage of addressees which
have access to the message (or how many and which nodes of the network
have received and stored the message) and the percentage of addressees
which have actually accessed the message. Often, it is the number of
individuals at a particular management level or levels who are aware of
the information which determines the effectiveness of the information.
While this information is available to the sender, at the current state of
the art, it can only be extracted from the individual acknowledgement
messages by manual browsing and sifting procedures.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an
arrangement for collecting, sorting and compiling statistical summaries of
message acknowledgement data.
It is another object of the invention to provide for presentation of
correlated acknowledgement data in a multimedia display format,
substantially in real time.
It is a further object of the invention to provide improved ease and speed
of access to information concerning information dissemination.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a user definable
multimedia display format for presentation of correlations of data and
statistical summaries and to allow superposition of other useful
information thereon for enhancement of user understanding of the
information presented.
In order to accomplish these and other objects of the invention, a
combination is provided including a network of data processing terminals,
the network being capable of transmitting messages between terminals and
including means for generating confirmation of delivery messages in
response to a request therefor, a source of information concerning users
of the network, a correlation service for accessing information from the
source of information in response to data contained in a confirmation of
delivery message, and means for accumulating information, by categories,
accessed from the source of information.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a method is provided
for displaying confirmation of delivery information to an operator of a
terminal of a network capable of selectively transmitting messages between
respective terminals connected by the network and generating confirmation
of delivery messages in response to an access to a message transmitted
between terminals of the network, comprising the steps of accessing
information in response to contents of at least one confirmation of
delivery messages, accumulating information accessed by the accessing
step, and generating at least one of a visual display and an audible
indication to an operator in response to information accumulated by the
accumulating step.
In accordance with a further aspect of the invention, a method is provided
for displaying confirmation of delivery information to an operator of a
terminal of a network capable of selectively transmitting messages between
respective terminals connected by the network and generating confirmation
of delivery messages in response to an access to a message transmitted
between terminals of the network, comprising the steps of accessing
information in response to a distribution list for a message, attaching
the information to a distribution identifier address of said message,
accumulating information attached to said distribution identifier address,
and generating at least one of a visual display and an audible indication
to an operator in response to information accumulated by the accumulating
step.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be better
understood from the following detailed description of a preferred
embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is an organizational block diagram depicting the function operations
involved in sending an e-mail message over a network,
FIG. 2 is a more detailed block diagram of the sender portion of FIG. 1
showing an implementation of the invention in basic form,
FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating user definition of enhanced COD
message reports in accordance with the present invention,
FIG. 4 is illustrates operation of the invention at the time of sending an
e-mail message,
FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating the operation of the invention upon
receipt of a COD acknowledgement by the sender,
FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating control of the display by the
presentation manager,
FIGS. 7 and 8 represent displays including exemplary templates, icons and
overlay windows,
FIGS. 9 and 10 are exemplary icons illustrating the nature of information
presented in accordance with the invention, and
FIG. 11 is a block diagram of the presentation manager in accordance with
the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION
Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIG. 1, there is
shown, in block diagram form, a portion of a data processing network
supporting the transmission of an e-mail message. FIG. 1 is specifically
not admitted to be prior art as to the present invention although many of
the individual elements depicted therein are well-known. The essential
elements, of course, are a sender terminal 10, a receiver terminal 30 and
a communications network 60. An address directory 50 may or may not be
provided either locally (e.g. local to the terminal), centrally or
distributed over a plurality of network nodes. Communication with address
directory 50 over the network is depicted since it is usual for such
communication to involve some portion of the network. The architecture or
distribution of such a directory is irrelevant to the practice of the
invention and the depiction is intended as generic to all such directory
architectures and arrangements. As will be discussed in greater detail
below, however, it is important to the practice of the invention that
access to address or user ID information be available at any terminal at
which the invention is to be practiced.
As part of the communications package, preferably including a modem or
other network interface, not shown, and suitable software to control the
same, each terminal or, more preferably, each user identification (user
ID) will have access to a mailbox 12, 32, usually in the form of a
directory having limited accessibility. Associating mailboxes with user
ID's or allowing access based on user ID's rather than on a
terminal-by-terminal basis allows a user to access his mailbox from any
terminal connected to the system. The communications package will
preferably also include a group 14, 34 of files or dedicated memory areas
including file management utilities 16, 36 for composing messages to be
sent and saving and deleting messages which have been received, user
defined distribution lists 18, 38 user defined automatic functions 20, 40
(e.g. for automatic forwarding of messages (e.g. to supervisors), and
possibly a log of outgoing mail 22, 42 or other functions (e.g. spell
check and thesaurus functions), as may be desired and a list of incoming
messages 24, 44 which serves as a directory of received e-mail files
contained in each respective mailbox 12, 32.
It should be remembered that FIG. 1 represents a network and that a message
may involve a plurality of addressees 30, 30', 30", etc., each of which
will include access to address directory 50 and the functional counterpart
of file groups 14, 34 and mailboxes 12, 32. In this regard, it should be
noted that the architecture of the system is depicted in FIGS. 1 and 2 in
a manner which will facilitate an understanding of the invention rather
than seeking to convey any preference concerning actual system
architecture to be employed in the practice of the invention. In fact, it
is preferable for reasons unrelated to the invention to provide mailboxes
32 and storage for files 34 on a "per node" basis for terminals 30, 30',
30", etc. in the network. For the network or a node of the network, it is
also preferable for reasons of transmission logging rather than for
purposes of the invention to provide a centralized mail service facility
70 but which is not necessary to the practice of the invention.
When, for example, sender 10 uses utilities 16 to compose and send a
message, the file and addressee identifier, such as a user ID or a
plurality thereof corresponding to specified addresses or one or more
distribution lists 18 or both are sent to the mail service (or directly to
the addressees or the nodes of the system on which the addressees reside).
If the mail service 70 is present, the transmission will provoke the
generation of a unique distribution identifier (UDI) which may consist
simply of a time stamp (TS) concatenated with the user ID of the sender to
form a UDI since only one user may initiate a distribution at any instant
on the network, as an incident of network protocols. This UDI is sent to
sender 10 as an acknowledgement of access to the network. In accordance
with the invention, upon receipt of a UDI (or some other acknowledgement
of network access), the sender develops and stores a list of addressees
for the e-mail message illustrated as out list 22. This out list 22
contains all the addressees specified for the e-mail message and forms a
data structure which will be used in the practice of the invention as will
be discussed in greater detail below.
The message which proceeds to one or more addressees or addressee nodes
continues to contain the user ID and the file. The UDI may be transmitted
as well if mail service 70 is present in the network. As is common with
most transmission systems, and digital transmission systems in particular,
numerous arrangements for monitoring the progress of the transmission are
provided such as by answer-back types of acknowledgement for correct or
corrupted transmission. If a corrupted transmission is detected, packets
of the digital transmission can be repeated at the sender under control of
the answer-back signal. Answer-back signals are also sent for correct
reception of data to insure transmission system integrity. It is therefore
contemplated that the invention will be responsive to at least some of
these acknowledgements in the same manner as confirmation of delivery
(COD) acknowledgements which are automatically sent as e-mail messages
when an addressee accesses the e-mail message sent. Therefore, it will be
sufficient for an understanding of the invention to describe the operation
of the invention in response to COD messages.
Referring now to FIG. 2, the major elements of the system for providing
enhanced COD information display is shown for one terminal 10, 30 of the
network. The sender terminal 10 preferably includes a local storage unit
80 such as a floppy disk or hard disk, a keyboard 85 and mouse 85' input
devices, a preferably color display 90 and an audio annunciator 95. The
audio annunciator 95 may be simply a tone generator and speaker but could
include a speech synthesizer, all of which are, themselves, known in the
art in combination with computer terminals.
The major functional elements of the system for carrying out the invention
are a presentation manager 110, a reception manager 120, a statistical log
130, a correlation service 140 and an association resolution mechanism
150. The presentation manager is a display controller which includes
storage for default and user-defined templates or background video
patterns 112 and video attributes which are to be applied to the
background templates, preferably as attributes, animation sub-routines or
devices 114 and thresholds 116 which are to be applied to data for control
of video attributes. The reception manager 120 receives COD messages,
discriminating them from other e-mail messages, and controls operation of
the correlation service in response thereto. The correlation service 140
establishes which information concerning the user causing the generation
of the COD message is of interest to the sender of the e-mail message
based upon previously entered user definitions. The correlation service
140 also obtains that information from address directory 50 and causes it
to be returned to the statistical log 130 which accumulates the
information of interest and may perform user defined computations thereon.
The details of these functional blocks is relatively unimportant to the
invention. For example, the correlation service 140 is basically a look-up
table. Similarly, statistical log 130 functions basically in the nature of
a spreadsheet calculator. However, in combination, the correlation service
140 dynamically defines variables for the statistical log and controls
presentation of data thereto. Similarly, association resolution mechanism
150 also functions as an address conversion arrangement which could be
done with a look-up table. Presentation manager 110 is a display generator
capable of merging a plurality of inputs and delivering an encoded video
signal using components and techniques that are individually
well-understood in the art. An exemplary hardware embodiment will be
discussed in detail with reference to FIG. 11 to convey an understanding
of the invention but the details thereof are not critical to the invention
and many other arrangements in hardware, software or a combination thereof
will be evident to those skilled in the art in view of the following
description of the operation of the invention.
It is important to the ability of the invention to present data which is
useful to the operator that the invention permit the response to COD
messages to be user-defined. This procedure will now be discussed with
reference to FIG. 3. The operation of the invention to implement the
response definitions provided by the user will also serve as introduction
to the functions and relationships of structure illustrated in FIG. 2. The
operations depicted in FIG. 3 are executed over control connection 160 of
FIG. 2.
When a user is confronted with the sending of a message which will involve
a large number of COD replies and wishes to provide an enhanced summary
display of the progress of receipt of such replies, a registration
procedure is started at 301. A name for the screen or window to be
produced is provided by means of keyboard 85 and background display
attributes (e.g. color, texture, etc.) and a template are selected at 303
to correspond to the screen or window name. Templates are preferably in
the form of a skeleton map such as of the world, a country, business
facility, isometric view of a building or the like. However,
organizational charts may also be advantageously used in some instances.
In any case, a template is basically any graphic design which may be of
assistance to an operator in assimilating information displayed in a
format related thereto and need be no more than a pattern of video bits
simulating an overlay.
At step 305, the operator may specify attributes for categories of
information of interest. For example, if the operator is interested in the
response of different departments to which an e-mail message is to be
sent, they may be differentiated by colors or audio signals or both, such
as red for the planning department, green for marketing and blue with an
audio tone or synthesized voice message for engineering or product
development personnel. At this step also, the operator may select an icon,
preferably from a library of prepared icons for presentation of the
display. The icons may be of any form or design which will express the
number of correlations of data which are of interest. For example, if
comparison of department response is important an icon in the form of a
histogram such as that shown in FIG. 9 may be appropriate. A matrix using
thresholds to change color at a predetermined (e.g. 50%) value could be
used to indicate departments and supervisory levels within departments.
Overlaid pie charts such as in FIG. 10 could also be used with or without
video (e.g. attribute alteration) or audio signals to display a plurality
of categories. In contrast, for more simple cases, such as indicating
receipt by anyone at each of a plurality of locations, simple colored dots
could be used for the icon and thresholds set to alter color when 0%
reception was exceeded. While it is anticipated that only a single type of
icon will be used for better visual comparison, in theory, a plurality of
icons could be used, particularly in a case where several different
combinations of categories were of interest. These definitions of
template, attributes, icons and thresholds are all stored in the
presentation manager 110 for control thereof.
The positional location of each icon is then defined at step 306 and stored
in presentation manager 110. This is preferably provided under control of
a mouse 85' and a correlation parameter is associated therewith and stored
in the correlation service 140 and as a variable identifier in statistical
log 130. The correlation parameter is contemplated as usually being a
geographical identifier which will correspond to a position on a selected
template and reflect a network node or facility. However, other categories
such as departments might be useful in connection with an organizational
chart template. The simultaneous definition of a template location in the
presentation manager 110 at which an icon will be displayed, a category of
interest in correlation service 140 of COD messages for sorting of COD
return data and variable identifier in statistical log 130 provides for
separation of data and correct direction of data to be reflected in the
display of each icon.
Next, at step 307, special case attributes are defined for particular
addressee user ID's or special categories of addressees, such as providing
for an audio indication for high level managers, special colors for
vendors and the like. These special attributes are similarly stored in at
least the presentation manager 110 and correlation service 140. In many
cases it will be desirable to omit these special case responses from any
statistical summaries and inclusion or omission may be accomplished by
appropriate storage in statistical log corresponding to a unique variable
identifier or a variable identifier which will cause grouping with other
responses for summarization.
In most cases, it is contemplated that the function of statistical log 308
will merely be that of summation of categories of responses, which the
invention provides as a default, it is possible that more complex
numerical analysis and summation will be desired. If such calculations are
requested by the user, the request is detected at 308, the calculations
defined by the operator at 310 and a statistics flag set to activate the
calculations at 311. As will be seen in the following discussion of FIG.
4, the logging of CODs is preferably done upon the receipt of each COD to
reduce response time of the system when the COD status display for a
message is requested. The use of a flag greatly reduces the computational
overhead for CODs which do not require the calculation or calculations
specified. Once all the desired definitions have been specified by the
user or by default, the registration process is completed to define the
desired display screen or window by storage at step 309, preferably in
storage means 80, from which it is recalled as needed.
As indicated by alternative entry and exit from the registration process,
as indicated at 304 and 312, the registration process is initially done at
the will of the operator but may be re-entered under the control of the
invention as will now be described with reference to FIG. 4. When an
e-mail message to be sent has been composed, detection of the presence of
an acknowledgement or COD request is detected from the note in a manner
known in the art for generating a COD at a receiving terminal 30.
Detection at the sender, however, in accordance with the invention,
initiates a review 400 of the distribution which will occur but may not be
fully known to the sender. This procedure also discovers instances where
information which will be relied upon by the statistical log and could
thus cause reporting errors. If no COD is requested, of course, the send
routine which includes waiting for a send command, detected at 411, and
the execution of that command 412 may proceed as in prior e-mail systems.
Likewise, if there is to be no correlation of CODs requested, detected at
402, the invention causes branching at 402 and the send routine may
proceed. However, if correlation of COD data is requested, the
distribution list data is fetched from address directory 50 at 403 and the
display definitions are accessed at 404. Then at 405 each addressee is
checked to determine if the information to be used is available and to
require a viable definition for it if the information is not available by
branching to "A" of FIG. 3 if it is not, as shown by dashed line and
circle 413 in FIG. 4. Steps 406 and 407 are optional as indicated by
dashed line 420 and will be discussed below as a preferred variation of
the invention. If the defined information is available for the addressee
and the process is not interrupted at 408, all addressees will be checked
in turn, looping at 415, including all nested distribution lists
controlled by the addressees in the distribution list specified by the
sender. If any data required by the definitions is unavailable for any of
the addressees which will actually receive the message, the disposition of
COD data corresponding to such addressees is forced by branching to a
portion of the registration process of FIG. 3. Since either the
presentation definitions may be changed or the data handled as a special
case, it is preferable to reinitiate the comparison procedure by
re-entering the process of FIG. 4 as indicated at "B". However, as will be
understood by those skilled in the art, definition of a special case could
be detected and appropriate branching provided to re-enter the process
within the loop at 405 to avoid re-checking of addressees already checked.
This checking operation can be interrupted at any time at the will of the
operator preferably by commanding display of the correlation definitions,
detected at 408 and executed at 409. These definitions can than be
overridden at 410, if desired, by branching to 304 of FIG. 3. Comparison
should then be reinitiated by re-entering the comparison process at "B",
as described above. When all comparisons have been completed, as detected
at 415, the loop is exited and the send routine may be initiated at 411.
As a preferred variation of the invention, and with slight variation of the
mail service provided by the network, receiving terminal or as shown at 70
of FIG. 1, the operation of the invention for reporting of COD data can be
speeded greatly. If an acknowledgement function capable of returning
transmitted parameters in the same manner as the sender address is
included, all the information to be operated upon by statistical log 130
can be appended to the e-mail message and transmitted therewith. To a | | |
