METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MANAGING AND ARCHIVING ELECTRONIC
MESSAGES
FIELD
The present invention generally relates to data management and storage techniques. More particularly, it relates to an efficient method and system for managing and archiving electronic messages.
BACKGROUND
Electronic mail or email has become one of the most widely used communication tools in the world. E-mail correspondence is quickly replacing postal mail. Personal correspondence as well as business related information is increasingly being exchanged via e-mail. A large percentage of business related information and documents in a business office are now distributed and stored as e-mails. With secure systems now being in place, even confidential documents can be easily exchanged over email.
In a typical business environment, an electronic mail system is installed in the computer network of the organization and the employees are assigned their personal email addresses and associated mailboxes with which they can send and receive their e-mails. In such an e-mail system, e-mails are sent and received via an email server, which directs incoming mail to the mailbox of the user to whom the mail is sent. Thus, the emails addressed to an individual are stored in his mailbox. Each user is responsible for the storage, organization and classification of the emails in his mailbox. The most commonly used technology in such a business environment is that of an email post office. The email post office acts as a central server for storage and distribution. The emails received at the email post office are routed to the private mailboxes. Email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc., are used for reading and sending emails at the user's computer.
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Information such as meetings, appointments and schedules with colleagues and customers, relevant documents, etc, are transferred over email. Unless individual users grant permission, such emails cannot be accessed or viewed by anyone else.
In the current multi-user business environment, to match the existing business requirements and facilitate collaboration, it is vital for the users to actively store and share this information in a manner such that it is accessible and shared across the organization. This information may contain official data such as customer information and vital business documents and information that might be required by other members of the organization as well. If such a practice is not followed, there is a considerable risk of loss of important business information adversely affecting the business. This risk is particularly present, incases of individuals leaving the organization, a computer breakdown etc. Though there exists a way to retrieve the data of the individual members of staff in an organization by a skilled person in the field, it leads to loss of valuable time and efficiency of several employees of the organization and ultimately affects the organization.
In a separate area of application, emails are considered as legal proof to substantiate a case, and therefore become critical for legal discovery. Due to humungous load of emails and disorganized storage, legal implications could be protracted and the company held accountable if e-mail evidence is not found. Often, as directed by specific compliance mandates, organizations are required to consistently classify, categorize and store their e-mails in order to facilitate legal discovery as and when needed.
With the increasing number of emails sent and received, the shortcomings of existing email systems also follow.
Usually email correspondence comprises subsequent replies and forwards sent for a particular mail along with copies to other recipients. Not only does it increase the load on the server, it also is an added burden on the user to handle and manage more emails. Further, there is a possibility that during such correspondence the subject of the email is changed. In such a situation, several errors can occur while gathering all the
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data relating to a particular conversation over email. In conventional systems, emails received with the same subject will be saved in the inbox and the corresponding emails sent will be saved in the sent items as separate units. Thus there is no depiction of a link between them.
However, each follow-up email contains a chain of the previous sent and received mails in the form of text or attached file. Thus the user has a consolidated view of related emails, But, as the number of emails and the users in the chain increase, the problem of the same emails being stored repeatedly in every individual's mailbox also arises. This redundancy of mails becomes hectic for the user to handle. It also takes up a lot of storage space in the mailbox. Also, considerable efficiency of the organization is lost in managing these mails as they are present in the mailbox of every individual in the chain.
Another important aspect is searching within emails. Searching from an ever-increasing pool of emails is a constant performance issue, which directly impacts the costs and efforts involved. Many existing email management systems allow the user to identify emails based on the subject or the sender/receiver of the email. In the short-listed emails based on the search criteria specified, there still exists the problem of searching and extracting relevant data as there will be several emails with the same subject, sender, etc. Another issue that needs to be addressed is that in some cases the subject of the email conveys completely different content than is actually present in the email. This happens as many people write an unrelated message by replying to an older email.
The above scenario depicts the various factors contributing to the continuously increasing load of emails. Storing, organizing, archiving and searching humungous amount of emails is a gargantuan task, especially so when it is required by law and compliance mandates.
Various systems exist in the field that claim to have overcome these disadvantages but still suffer form several drawbacks. A number of systems have been proposed, which focus on one or the other aspect of email archival and retrieval,
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Some systems talk about extracting all data in the emails in the form of a text or a word file and saving it as one single file. Collating the information on a particular topic is difficult as follow-up emails are distributed over the inbox, sent and sometimes even deleted folders, Printing the emails as a reference is also a voluminous job with a diminishing utility on the resources of the organization.
CN11150529 describes a method and system for mail search. The email search performed according to this citation involves splitting each email received into keywords based on its content and entering the corresponding relation between each keyword and' received email into email search engine. Thereafter these relationships between the keywords and emails are used while searching for required emails.
However, this document does not talk about searching within attachments, In many cases the majority of relevant content is stored within the attachment sent with an email. For example, the text pertaining to a matter may be voluminous and hence be enclosed as an attachment. However, since the searching methodology used in conventional systems is restricted only till the body of the email, it shall miss out those described above. However, the present invention extends the search performed to the attachments of the emails as well. In case the attachment is in the form of a scanned document, it performs optical character recognition on the same to search within it.
GB2383655 describes a method of searching for electronic mail in portable cellular phone and electronic mail searching program for portable cellular phone. The electronic mail searching method for cellular phones according to this citation involves searching for a specified character string of stored mail and displaying searched mail in display screen of cellular phone.
However, this document does not talk about saving the search string used fir performing the search and neither does it mention saving the search results for future reference or exporting them as a file, All these functions are provided by the present invention.
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JP2003067304 describes an electronic mail filtering system, electronic mail filtering method, electronic mail filtering program and recording medium recording it. The email filtering system has an evaluation module which analyzes words of saved e-mail group to determine necessary and unnecessary e-mails, and reorganizes word list based on analysis.
However, in this document the word list is user specific and has to be explicitly be defined by the user. In the present invention, this word list can be formed without user intervention by using artificial intelligence. Further, the filtering may also be performed on the basis of rules defined for classifying emails.
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY
The present invention aims at offering a solution for automated and efficient email archival, managements and retrieval in particularly but not restricted to a business environment wherein huge volumes of emails are received and sent, with mechanisms built to facilitate legal discovery, adherence to compliance and norms, ensure business continuity and enable collaboration among enterprise users through a number of powerful features such as capturing metadata from incoming and outgoing e-mails, removal of duplicate content (in both the email body and attachment), categorizations and classification of e-mails, obtaining a complete chain of a conversation and presenting it in a consolidated view, quick retrieval of required e-mail data, saving complex or frequent searches for data retrieval in future, saving searches as reports, tight administrative control by building rules and assigning access rights and permissions for users to view and access e-mails, anytime anywhere access by enabling access through Web and handheld devices, and building comprehensive retention policies, besides several other features.
The instant invention proposes an approach to manage and archive electronic messages in an efficient manner offering several advantages and features over existing systems. Further, the implementation of existing tasks is performed in a manner that allows for less memory storage and faster processing. As an example, due to the fact that each electronic message is assigned a unique ID, related emails can be correctly identified
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even if the user changes the subject of the subsequent messages. As a result of this, messages can easily be linked in the form of mail trails as well as linked parallel conversations,
Further, the instant invention makes use of artificial intelligence to classify and archive emails. This reduces user intervention for individually categorizing messages as well as for defining rules for classifying or archiving messages.
The instant invention also provides for a novel searching methodology. The user can save and export his search results for future use and reference. He can also save the search string used and can link it to the search results. This aids in analyzing the results and also for makes it simple to perform frequent searches which involve complex search
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It is an object of the instant invention to obviate the above drawbacks and provide a method and system for managing electronic messages.
It is an object of the instant invention to provide a method for searching required data in an electronic message management system.
It is further an object of the instant invention to provide a method for creating an electronic message management system
To achieve the aforementioned objectives, the invention provides a method and system for an efficient method and system for managing and archiving electronic messages. The method for managing electronic messages comprises the steps of receiving an electronic message, indexing said electronic message, capturing metadata from said message, storing said metadata, removing duplicate data present in the email body as well as the attachment and storing a single copy of said message wherein each new electronic message is indexed using a unique message ID.
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The system for managing and archiving electronic messages comprises an import module which interfaces with the existing server systems, email server which stores electronic messages which have been archived, user mail box which stores and displays electronic messages stored in the mail box of the user, content storage server which stores the content of said messages, metadata database which stores the metadata of said messages, policy manager which defines rights and privileges and a policy engine which implements said defined rights and privileges wherein said server stores only a single instance of each electronic message based on said message ID,
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS
- FIGURE 1 illustrates a flow chart depicting the basic operation of the instant invention
- FIGURES 2 and 3 illustrate a block diagrams depicting the architecture of the instant invention
The instant invention has been referred to as 'OmniMail' in the diagrams.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS
The present system provides the following mechanisms for automated and efficient email archival, management and retrieval:
• Single instance mail storage
• Mail capture using IMAP
• Classification and categorization of mails
• De-duplication of e-mails and e-mail attachments
» Access rights and privileges for users to access e-mail data
• Advanced search (both desktop based and Web based) based on different criteria and saving search results as reports
• Single box full text search for email headers, body and attachments
• Saving search criteria for instant query execution and quick retrieval in future
• Rules for consistent and efficient archival of mails
• Rules for retention policies for mails
• Online status of a user reflected in all user interfaces
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• Real time collaboration in creation of email or using it as a base in creation of some other document
• Email compression
• Managing and compacting user mailboxes
• Email stubbing for storage optimization
Specific exemplary embodiments of the invention now will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. This invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of the invention to those skilled in the art. The terminology used in the detailed description of the particular exemplary embodiments illustrated in the accompanying drawings is not intended to be limiting of the invention. In the drawings, like numbers refer to like elements,
As used herein, the singular forms "a", "an" and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless expressly stated otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "includes", "comprises", "including" and/or "comprising", when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "connected" or "coupled" to another element, it can be directly connected or coupled to the other element or intervening elements may be present. Furthermore, "connected" or "coupled" as used herein may include wirelessly connected or coupled. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.
Unless otherwise defined, all terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. It will be further understood that terms, such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries, should be interpreted as having a meaning that
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is consistent with their meaning in the context of the relevant art and will not be interpreted in an idealized or overly formal sense unless expressly so defined herein.
FIGURE 1 illustrates a flowchart depicting the basic operation of the instant invention, the procedure involved in managing incoming electronic messages,
In step 101, the system receives an electronic message from an external email client, The following steps describe how the message is handled by the present invention, Next, in step 102, the received message Is indexed. In step 103, the metadata of the indexed message is extracted and stored in the metadata database in step 104. This database is accessed while searching based on criteria such as sender, date and time of receiving etc.
In step 105, the received message is analyzed to determine if any duplicate data exists which is then removed. The content of the email as well as the attachment are checked, The present system supports single instancing of email for efficient storage. In a general scenario, if one email is received by many users, several copies of the same mail get stored on the server, thus increasing the redundancy of the system. The present invention indexes the emails using an instance ID. This is a unique email index created by the system to uniquely distinguish each email from all others. The instance ID avoids storage of duplicate copies of the same mail, thus saving storage space.
In addition, attachments form a huge bulk of space occupied by emails. In case of duplicate attachments as well, the system is able to remove redundancy without compromising on email data integrity, Further, in several cases mails on a common topic contain long mail-trails which also comprise of only duplicate data. This redundant data is also handled by the present system,
In step 106, once the duplicate data within the received email is removed, a single copy of the said message is stored at the content storage server. The storage space is compacted as well through deletion of mails from the email server which have been archived in the system. Stubs of the emails present in the email server are created to
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further optimize storage space. This also provides seamless archived email access to the end user. Further, the present system compresses the email content while storing it for efficient usage of storage space in case of volume of emails.
This stored message then is assigned a unique message ID in step 107.
FIGURES 2 and 3 illustrate a block diagrams depicting the architecture of the instant invention.
In figure 2, block 201 depicts a mail box which stores and displays electronic messages stored in the mail box of the user. Block 202 depicts the import service unit which retrieves mails received by and distributed over various email clients used by the user. It interfaces with these and periodically polls these clients to extract messages which need to be archived. Block 203 depicts the server where all archived messages are stored and accessed from. Block 204 depicts the processing module where all received messages are processed based on the metadata stored and other defined rules. Block 205 depicts a content storage server which stores the content of the messages, for example, as flat files. This kind of structure also aids faster searching. Block 206 depicts a metadata database which stores the metadata, for example, to, from and subject data fields of said messages. Block 207 depicts a policy engine which defines rights and privileges archived messages are accessed. Block 208 depicts the policy manager which implements the defined rights and privileges.
In figure 3, the email parser (302) retrieves the electronic messages from the mail server (301) and parses them to retrieve data required for archival. The parsed data is then sent to the import service (303) wherein these are stored as records. These records are then archived at the server (304) as metadata, message body and attachments. These archived messages can then be searched and viewed at the web client (305) or using alternative email clients such as Outlook or Lotus Notes (306)
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The present invention also provides for an efficient, comprehensive and customized search methodology. This search can be desktop as well as web based wherein the search criteria can be saved. In a certain scenario, if it is required to search and obtain a group of mails specific to a project, implementation or a lawsuit, the system provides the capability of searching any set of archived mails on the basis of advanced search criteria. The search criteria can be saved for the future use, which can be executed whenever required. Further, the search results can be saved as a search report and the mails obtained in the search can be exported as a zip file for offline use. The present system provides both single text box as well as full text search where the search string is searched in email headers, body and attachments. Another advantage of the instant system would be that it would provide a federated style full text search of emails. Replacing the primitive style searching based on subjects, senders/receivers, the system would search the mails and the text in the mails based on headers, body and attachments of the mail. This information would be saved as metadata in the system.
Mail trails and linked or parallel conversations in which the user has been marked can be identified using the unique instance ID. Even if the user alters the subject of the email, it is possible to identify the linked ones as their ID remains unchanged. Identifying all related emails leads to the creation of an email graph or conversation tree which can be expanded when accessed by the user. This comprises all email nodes related to each other therefore allowing the user to navigate all related emails on which that user has access rights. As per the rights of the user, either he will be able to see all the related emails on which he is marked or in case of supervisory rights, he can even view those emails in which he was not marked but a user on whose account on which he has access privileges was marked.
The present system aiso provides collaboration through real time editing of email content by multiple users concurrently for creation of a new email or some other kind of document. Users which are online in our product ecosystem are shown as online in all the user interfaces of the system including email view.
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For the purpose of email archival, the system encompasses a policy builder module which can be used to define access rights and privileges to users for viewing and accessing emails, archival policies for automated classification and storage of e-mails along with the associated metadata, building quota policy restricting the mailbox size for individual users or group of users, and other policies. Auto email categorization is performed on the basis of context text tags which can be either added manually by users or can be recognized by the system by using artificial intelligence.
Current email management systems also do not have any method to categorize emails as the cluttering increases over a period of time. The present system provides means for organizing and re-indexing of individual mails. It further re-categorizes the mails into categories such as business mails, client mails, personal mails etc. It supports an email categorization and auto classification.
The instant invention also makes auto categorization possible on the basis of content ages using artificial intelligence. The system automatically learns to identify the important keywords in emails on the basis of training provided by the user in which the user archives emails in certain categories to inform the system as to what is considered to be part of which category. The system will then automatically will then automatically identify important keywords and then categorize on the basis of those keywords. These can be obtained from the email header, body, attachments and/or any third party database. As an example, it may obtain customer or vendor information from a CRM system. The system can further archive emails based on the category it belongs to. As an example, the system can archive mails which contain the customer or vendor names which are retrieved from the external database.
The present system offers extended support to existing email clients like Outlook express, MS Outlook, Lotus Notes etc. Hence, integration into the existing systems would be beneficiary on an organizational level as it would prevent configuring and formatting of the systems. This shall in turn save time and efficiency of the user and the organization,
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Within the present system, there is also provided web-based access to emails. This would provide convenient anytime, anywhere access to emails. Also, as the mails will be saved on a server and will be online, retrieval of older items would also be possible at any instance of time, irrespective of the location of the user. The system is also responsible for automatic email backups; granting the user independence from managing the data, fear of data loss etc. Also, it would provide access through handheld devices providing convenient access, mail compression to reduce storage access and faster transfer, access and retrieval.
As will be appreciated by one of skill in the art, the present invention may be embodied as a method, system, or computer program product. Accordingly, the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, a software embodiment or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects all generally referred to herein as a "circuit" or "module". Furthermore, the present invention may take the form of a computer program product on a computer-usable storage medium having computer-usable program code embodied in the medium.
Any suitable computer readable medium may be utilized including hard disks, CD- ROMs, optical storage devices, a transmission media such as those supporting the Internet or an intranet, or magnetic storage devices.
Furthermore, the present invention was described in part above with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention.
It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart Illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the
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functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram 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/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram 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/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The flowchart and schematic illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operations of some embodiments of methods, systems, and computer program products for media tuning. In this regard, each block may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that in other implementations, the function(s) noted in the blocks may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending on the functionality involved.
In the drawings and specification, there have been disclosed exemplary embodiments of the invention. Although specific terms are employed, they are used in a generic and descriptive sense only and not for purposes of limitation, the scope of the invention being defined by the following claims
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