Claims:We Claim:

1. A system for improving the performance of a mailing application comprising:
a) one or more mailing application monitoring agent to monitor the performance of mailing application based on a number of rules having one or more counters with threshold levels, wherein said mailing application monitoring agent resides in an end user device;
b) an intelligence engine to correlate different logs & incidents and provide alerts; and
c) a dashboard to spot the issue and apply playback of activities across different timelines, wherein said intelligence engine and said dashboard resides in a central system.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said mailing application is an Outlook.

3. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said mailing application monitoring agent is intrusive and/or non-intrusive in nature.

4. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said monitoring includes but not limited to: Outlook Audit, Mail Traffic Monitor, Latency Monitor, Attachment Monitor, Shared Mail box Monitor, Undelivered Mail Monitor and Synchronization Monitor.

5. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said rules check at least the following parameters but not limited to: system kernel time usage, application code execution usage, CPU utilization, Memory Handle Count, Memory Thread Count, Memory Private Bytes, Memory Utilization (Usage), Disk IO Read Utilization and Disk IO Write Utilization.

6. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said end user device is selected from a group comprising of a desktop, a computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a mobile/smart phone and a portable electronic device.

7. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said alert is selected from a group comprising of a notification, a message, a pop-up, and a mail.

8. A method for improving the performance of a mailing application comprising the steps of:
a) Monitoring the performance of said mailing application by mailing application monitoring agent based on a number of rules having one or more counters with threshold levels;
b) Spotting the occurrence of issue on said mailing application using said mailing application monitoring agent;
c) Correlating the different logs & incidents obtained from said mailing application monitoring agent in an intelligence engine;
d) Providing alerts in case of finding any issues; and
e) Displaying said issues and playback of activities across different timelines in a dashboard.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said mailing application monitoring agent deals with non-availability of resources, network issues and Outlook server issues.

, Description:FIELD OF THE INVENTION:

The present invention relates generally to the field of mailing applications. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for monitoring the performance of mailing application comprehensively and delivers a trouble-free experience to mail users.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION:

Generally, entities such as organizations, industries, companies, departments etc. make use of variety of software applications to create communication or data sharing etc. in their surrounding as well as worldwide. Now-a-days, email is one of the most important universal means for communication, augmenting, and sometimes replacing other traditional forms of communications, including postal service, FAX, and voice communications. Emails have become omnipresent because of its ease in composing, transmitting speed and the presence of internet in almost every corner of the world.

Microsoft Outlook, the personal information manager from Microsoft, which is also a part of the Microsoft Office suite is commonly used to send and receive mails. Especially, Microsoft outlook has been widely used in office premises for sharing informations between a group of machines in that environment, making alerts, sending / receiving emails and/or to make client communication. Hence, the outlook supports various types of files to transfer and reduces risk of file or data sharing through some other means. Though outlook provides efficient way to transfer the files, people meet some issues while using Microsoft outlook.

Users may encounter a number of problems with Microsoft Outlook and it becomes a serious concern for businesses. The System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) from Microsoft does not offer a performance monitoring tool for outlook to improve its performance. Moreover, Microsoft does not deliver any instrumentation code to enhance the performance of Outlook.

Many of the Outlook monitoring tools available in the market focus on utilization and not the performance, hence may not make Outlook users pleased. Third party tools like Exoprise, Cloudready, Solar winds, Manage Engine, Nagios etc. monitor the Exchange server and Office 365 cloud access, and not Outlook.

Here are some of the common daily challenges faced by Outlook users:
1. Outlook does not respond
2. Connectivity errors
3. Sluggishness
4. Send/Receive errors
5. Outlook crashes unexpectedly
6. Mail sent but not delivered
7. File attachments/ Extensions does not work
8. Mail does not load
9. Add-ins does not open
10. Slow sync between web mail and outlook
11. Outlook does not start
12. Empty Inbox

To avoid the aforementioned complications, many solutions has been developed. Few references are considered to be relevant as background to the presently disclosed subject matter and are listed below:

United States Patent Number 9208310 to Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd entitled “System and method for securely managing enterprise related applications and data on portable communication devices” relates to a system for monitoring performance of applications such as electronic mailing application to trace problems and provide remedial measures. This system includes appboxes residing in multiple portable communication devices. The device comprising an AppMonitor that captures memory usage, CPU utilization and disk usage information. An AppHealth module traces problems using application logs captured by AppGuard.

PCT Application Number 2017180109 to Entit Software LLC entitled “Application Performance Monitoring” relates to a system for monitoring performance of an application includes a transaction monitor rule that monitors transactions associated with the application. The system includes a performance interface that displays latency of each instance of transaction, an average latency for selected transaction, percentage of fail of transactions and a log message capture of error or fault messages per instance of the selected transaction.

United States Patent Number 9798647 to CA, Inc. entitled “Display window contextual visualization for application performance monitoring” discloses a method for monitoring the performance of an application involves obtaining the performance data associated with the application and comparing the performance data to a performance threshold value. The performance data is detected by monitoring agents that are installed on client devices and is transmitted by multiple application clients over a network to a centralized collection server.

United States Patent Number 9760467 to CA, INC. entitled “Modeling application performance using evolving functions” relates to an application performance management tool called as an Agent that collects data and sends to an enterprise manager. The enterprise manager compares it with threshold and sends to Workstations for display. The workstation includes a console to display performance data in customizable views and an explorer to depict alerts.

United States Patent Number 8302079 to CA, INC. entitled “Programmatic root cause analysis for application performance management” relates to a system and method of monitoring software performance for root cause analysis includes determining transactions with execution times beyond threshold. It includes an Agent that collects data and sends to an Enterprise Manager. A workstation includes a console to display performance data in customizable views and an explorer to depict alerts.

United States Patent Number 8635498 to Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P entitled “Performance analysis of applications” discloses a method for analyzing performance of an application to determine the cause of anomaly continuously monitors the application and collects performance metric data. The baseline state of the application is compared with the metrics to identify the segments with anomaly.

European Patent Application Number 3168748 to Wipro Limited entitled “System and Method for Monitoring Performance of Applications” relates to a system and method for monitoring performance of applications comprises retrieving performance information associated with the application from one or more sources and analysing the information to identify the variables affecting the performance of the application. The system includes a report generating module that generates dashboard report corresponding to trends, deviations and performance data.

Though the above mentioned prior art disclose about the performance monitoring of applications, none of the prior art disclose about the monitoring of performance of the system and correlating the different logs and incidents to provide alerts, non-intrusive or intrusive detection, dashboard, widgets and various analysis to improve the stability and performance of mailing applications.

Thus, the present invention proposes a solution by providing a mailing application monitoring agent that monitors the performance of mailing applications by spotting the errors, rather than just monitoring the utilization and helps in achieving 100% uptime, which is not offered by Microsoft or any for that matter.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION:

An objective of the present invention is to provide a system and method to monitor the performance of mailing application for instance, Microsoft outlook that empowers administrator to identify and troubleshoot the issues with any type of mailing application.

To achieve the above objective, the present invention proposes a comprehensive solution by providing a mailing application monitoring agent which monitors the performance of a mailing application, particularly Microsoft Outlook to identify and troubleshoot the issues with outlook to provide a seamless experience to users.

In the present invention, monitoring is done based on a number of rules with counters that measures the performance and stability of outlook with threshold levels based on the best practices in the industry. The mailing application monitoring agent is non-intrusive and / or intrusive in nature based on the requirement. The mailing application monitoring agent with other agents can forecast the issues and help to address the problems even before they arise.

According to the present invention, the mailing application monitoring agent enhances outlook user’s experience by monitoring the performance including the utilization and addresses various issues. In order to overcome the challenges faced by users, the mailing application monitoring agent includes a set of pre-framed rules. The dashboard of mailing application monitoring agent with a granular system, facilitates administrators to look for cause and course of action for all the problems faced by Outlook users. The mailing application monitoring agent monitors the performance of the system whichever associated to Outlook, rather than just monitoring the utilization.

Once the mailing application monitoring agents are deployed to the machines / end user devices, the data pertaining to Microsoft outlook from every machine is processed and verified against the rules. The rules are framed in such a way that they capture the events that affect the performance and stability of Microsoft Outlook. Each rule has a counter with a threshold level based on the best practices in the industry. The rules are designed in a way, such that the mailing application monitoring agent deals with non-availability of resources, network and Outlook (Exchange or O365) server issues effectively.

Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description and claims, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed for the purpose of illustration only and are not intended as a definition of the limits of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS:

The objective of the present invention will now be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows the overall flow of the present invention;

FIG. 2 shows the working and architecture of the mailing application monitoring agent; and

FIG. 3 shows the data flow architecture of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION:

The present invention proposes a system and method for monitoring the performance of outlook to provide seamless experience to users by identifying and troubleshooting the issues.

In the present invention, the mailing application monitoring agent monitors the performance of Microsoft Outlook, spots the errors and helps in achieving 100% uptime. Monitoring is done based on a number of rules with counters that measure the performance and stability of outlook with threshold levels based on best practices in the industry. The agent can be non-intrusive or intrusive in nature based on the requirement. The mailing application monitoring agent with other agents can forecast the issues and help to address the problems even before they arise. The said submission is to show how the mailing application monitoring agent provides outlook users a smooth and trouble-free experience.

According to the present invention, the mailing application monitoring agent enhances outlook user experience by monitoring the performance including the utilization and addresses various issues. The rules are made to overcome the challenges faced by outlook users. The dashboard of mailing application monitoring agent with a granular system, facilitates administrators to look for cause and course of action for all the problems faced by Outlook users. The mailing application monitoring agent monitors the performance of the system whichever associated to Outlook, rather than just monitoring the utilization.

The performance counters from which the rules are derived are listed below:

Resource Performance Counter
CPU System Kernel Time usage
Application code execution usage
CPU Utilization (Usage)
Memory Memory - Handle Count
Memory - Thread Count
Memory - Private Bytes
Memory Utilization (Usage)
Disk Disk IO Read Utilization
Disk IO Write Utilization

Hereafter, the working of the present invention is explained in detail.

FIG. 1 shows the flowchart to explain the overall flow of the present invention. In the present invention, the mailing application monitoring agent residing in each machine / end user device monitors the performance of outlook. The mailing application monitoring agent tool empowers the administrators to identify the issues with outlook. The issues can be a connectivity error, sending / receiving error, etc. The data pertaining from every machine are verified and processed against the threshold level of set of pre-framed rules. The rules designed in such a way that the mailing application monitoring agent deals with the non-availability of resources and network issues effectively. Each rule has a counter with threshold level, where it checks the system kernel time usage, application code execution usage, CPU utilization, Memory Handle Count, Memory Thread Count, Memory Private Bytes, Memory Utilization (Usage), Disk IO Read Utilization and Disk IO Write Utilization. Now, the intelligence engine correlates the different logs & incidents and provide alerts either in the form of message, notification, pop-up, or the like. The system of the present invention applies playback of activities across different timelines and the issues and playback activities are displayed in the dashboard. The mailing application monitoring agent tool with other agents can forecast the issues and help to address the problems even before they arise. Finally, it provides smooth and trouble-free experience to users.

In the present invention, when the mailing application monitoring agent is Non-intrusive, it captures all the performance counters from the end user machine where the Outlook runs. When the mailing application monitoring agent is Intrusive, it captures the outlook latency by sitting inside the outlook in the form of add-ins or similar concept. Similarly, the server side includes a mailing application monitoring agent to capture the server logs & performance of Exchange or O365 servers.

FIG. 2 depicts the working and architecture of the mailing application monitoring agent. The figure shows one or more mailing application monitoring agents deployed in multiple machines / end user devices to verify the process of mailing application in each machine against the pre-framed rules. Each machine includes a set of pre-framed rules with counters, intelligence engine and dashboard. Once the mailing application monitoring agents are deployed to the machines, the data pertaining to Microsoft outlook from every machine is processed and verified against the rules. The rules are framed in such a way that they capture the events that affect the performance and stability of Microsoft Outlook. Each rule has a counter with a threshold level based on the best practices in the industry. The rules are designed in a way, such that the mailing application monitoring agent deals with non-availability of resources and network issues effectively. The intelligence engine helps in correlating the different logs & incidents and provide alerts which are displayed in the dashboard. The intelligence engine and dashboard reside in a central system. For example, if the response of the web page is beyond a threshold limit, the engine provides alert and triggers an automation platform (not shown) by integrating with the other agents. The dashboard has facilities to spot the issue and apply playback of activities across different timelines. These issues are hidden/explicit issues or it could be unique experience of the end users. Further, the dashboard displays various factors like network response time, performance violation, etc. The central system provides alerts based on the processed data and further communicates with prediction analysis platform to predict the type of issue faced by the user.

Hereafter, the key features of the present invention are explained in detail.

The below listed features are available for both non-intrusive and intrusive mailing application monitoring agent types.

a) Leader Dashboard:
The Dashboard offers a single pane of glass overview of the performance of Microsoft Outlook in a granular way. An array of widgets are populated in the dashboard hence, the live monitoring gets easier. It has administrators which can dive deep to identify the root cause of issues. The list shows the data about network response, failed requests, violated machines, inactive machines, most affected machines and event overview which are present in widget form for better accessibility.

b) Notification:
Issue notification indicates the description, time of encounter, machine name to the administrators instantaneously and identifies the hidden issues too. The notifications also provide the possible course of action.

c) Machines verses Rules:
Violation count across all the machines are categorized by the pre-framed set of rules. This lets the administrators to know the rules that are violated most number of times and provide insights to the nature of the issues for each machine.

d) Rules verses Machines:
The graphical representation displays the machines with the number of violated rules and the count in the descending order provides end to end analysis. This clearly shows the machines that get affected frequently. By zeroing on these machines in the top of the list and understanding the ecosystem, a substantial number issues can be resolved.

e) Machine Level Analysis:
A machine is picked and the notifications and events pertaining to the machine are presented for a selected time frame in an exhaustive way. Machine level analysis also displays the live data which gives an edge to the administrators to detect the issues in real time.

f) Event analysis:
Administrators can dive deep by looking at the event log for further information where event’s data is provided in a much more granular way. Widgets specifying information about Outlook Search, Outlook Add-ins, Outlook ‘ost’ reconciliation, Outlook ‘Connection’ and all other categories of outlook deliver deeper insights.

The mailing application monitoring agent look through the mail content to derive insights in the latter type.

a) Data Extraction:
For a selected range of machine specific outlook performance, an offline analysis is performed. The administrator can single out a machine and download the machine specific Outlook performance data for a selected duration to figure out the cause and plug the issues.

b) BI Reporting:
To provide deeper insights of data, there is an essence of Business Intelligence (BI). The mailing application monitoring agent with other agents performs correlation, predicts the potential candidates that might hamper Outlook in future and gives an upper hand in the experience to the users.

c) Network Trouble-shooter
It locates the hop that causes network latency. This helps to identify the probable network hop(s) that are causes for the latency.

d) Peak Metric analysis:
It analyses all the Outlook performance health data in a 2x2 matrix. This way of representation helps the administrators to get the outline of the health of Outlook application in a quick and effective way.

e) Week on Week analysis:
An analysis is done for any performance metric between selected weeks to see how the outlook parameters stack up between weeks and understand the trend of a particular metric.

The upcoming features are made accessible for Intrusive mailing application monitoring agent model.

a) Outlook Audit:
This feature is used to ease the users’ pain points. The server side audit analysis helps users to sidestep the issues with copied messages in a different folder, mail box permission delegation, message movement between folders, mail box creation, deleted messages from deleted item folder, messages moved to deleted folder, purged messages, sent messages permissions etc.

b) Mail Traffic Monitor:
Using Mail traffic monitor, mail id traffic of any user is monitored. The mail traffic either from any id or to any id is analysed. Mail traffic monitor gives picture about the traffic associated with a particular used id.

c) Latency Monitor:
It lets the administrators to find out the overall latency for mails flowing between the mailbox and exchange. The latency in sending and receiving mails can be viewed separately.

d) Attachment Monitor:
It monitors the nature and the size of the attachment. Attachment monitors helps to gain control over attachments which is vital in businesses.

e) Shared Mail box Monitor:
It monitors the activities of shared mail box, and this becomes crucial since many users are involved with the same id.

f) Undelivered Mail Monitor:
Monitors and reports the mail that are not sent from outbox. Many a times mails stay in outbox and this is controlled by this monitor.

g) Synchronization Monitor:
It primarily to deals with the synchronization issues. It monitors synchronization between Outlook application and Office 365 or Exchange. Alerts are triggered if the monitor finds any synchronization issue.

FIG. 3 shows the data flow architecture of the present invention. By deploying mailing application monitoring agent to the end user devices / user’s machine, the data pertaining to Microsoft outlook of every machine is processed and verified against the pre-framed rules. The user experience of various end user devices such as desktop, mobile, etc. is send to the telemetry database via mailing application monitoring agent channels. Here, the data from telemetry database are send to the intelligence engine. The intelligence engine performs various operations on the received data. At first, it sends the data to a prediction analysis platform to predict the type of issue faced by the user. Also, the central system of the present invention maintains a dashboard which has facilities to spot the issues and apply playback of activities across different timelines. Further, the central system sends the input to development team / application owner to fix the identified issues. With this, an alert system is integrated to provide alert either in the form of notification, message, etc to end users. The intelligence engine of the present invention is also connected to the automation platform to indicate the workflow running status.

The mailing application monitoring agent works by capturing, monitoring, measuring and correlating the following:
• 55+ counters of outlook (process), around CPU, memory, Disk, Network, etc.
• Impact on outlook by rest of the ecosystem & vice versa
• Latency of outlook client with xxxxxx.yyyy.org
• Outlook event communication with the operating system
• Mailing application monitoring agent runs on each machine as a service under windows
• The server of .Net framework 4.0 or above is required
• Telemetry data gets pushed from agent to servers at periodic configurable intervals (typically every minute)
• 3 to 4 KB of data gets transferred during every push

Following are the non-limiting advantages of the present invention:
• Monitoring the performance and improving Outlook provides stability, ensures 100% availability and creates better user satisfaction levels, thereby paves way for business growth.
• Prediction from prediction analysis platform helps in providing adequate risk alerts, so that upcoming problems can be handled proactively before the user encounters it.

The proposed solution helps in ensuring that the incidents occurring in information technology that affects Microsoft outlook and other mailing applications are detected and mitigated even before they occur and thereby driving to error-free usage of outlook and other mailing applications. This improves the uptime and user satisfaction levels for Outlook and hence drives the revenue up.

While the foregoing written description of the invention enables one of ordinary skill to make and use what is considered presently to be the best mode thereof, those of ordinary skill will understand and appreciate the existence of variations, combinations, and equivalents of the specific embodiment, method, and examples herein. The invention should therefore not be limited by the above described embodiment, method, and examples, but by all embodiments and methods within the spirit and scope of the invention as claimed.