JP2002183058A - Electronic mail list preparation device and electronic mail list display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To facilitate access to an attachment in an electronic bulletin board, etc., list-displaying an electronic mail. SOLUTION: A list page 100 list-displays the subject 110 of a mail to which linking to the page of the contents of respective electronic mail is set. Then, link displays 120a and 120b to the file of the attachment attached to the electronic mail is displayed related with the subject 110.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for creating a list display of an electronic mail group.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There has been a demand for organizing received e-mails for reuse, and some software has been developed to respond to this.

[0003] One of them is MHOnArc. MHO
nArc converts the group of e-mails in the mailbox to HTM
This is a program that organizes data in an L-based database.
This program converts the body of each e-mail into an HTML file and displays a list of the subject (subject / title) and sender of each e-mail.
Create an L file. A link to the corresponding e-mail text file is set in the subject of this list, and the desired e-mail text can be accessed from the subject list display on the web browser. This program is often used to create web pages from mailing lists.

[0004]

In many cases, attachments (also referred to as attached data and attached files) are incorporated in electronic mail. On the contrary, the attachment is often more important as information than the body of the email. For example, when a product development department exchanges product drawings by e-mail, the attached drawing data is often more important information than the mail text.

[0005] In this regard, in this type of software such as conventional MHOnArc, a page representing the contents of a desired mail is accessed from a subject list page, and a link to the attachment indicated on this page is followed. The procedure was to access the attachment. That is, conventionally, it has not been possible to determine whether or not each mail has an attachment on the mail subject list page. Also, you will not be able to access the attachment until you open an individual email,
There was a problem that the operation was troublesome.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of such a problem, and in an apparatus for enabling access to each e-mail from a list of subjects of the e-mail group, facilitates access to an e-mail attachment. The purpose is to:

[0007]

In order to achieve the above object, an apparatus according to the present invention stores each given e-mail in a predetermined first storage means, and stores link information to each stored e-mail. An e-mail processing unit for generating, if the e-mail has an attachment, storing the e-mail in a predetermined second storage unit and generating link information to the attachment; an attachment processing unit for generating link information to the attachment; Means for creating a list description for displaying a list of link information to each of the e-mails, wherein the link information to the e-mail having an attachment is a link to the attachment stored in the second storage means. And a list creating means for creating a list description for displaying the information in association with the link information to the electronic mail.

Further, the apparatus according to the present invention comprises: mail processing means for storing given electronic mails in predetermined first storage means and generating link information to the stored electronic mails; When having an attachment, an attachment processing means for storing the attachment in a predetermined second storage means and generating link information to the attachment;
Means for organizing the e-mail group into one or more threads based on a derivation relationship; and a list display of link information to the e-mails stored in the first storage means in a format reflecting the threads. Means for creating a list description, wherein the list information is for creating a list description in which link information to the attachment stored in the second storage means is associated with the thread to which the corresponding e-mail belongs. Prepare.

Further, the apparatus according to the present invention comprises: mail processing means for storing given e-mails in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to the stored e-mails; When having an attachment, an attachment processing means for storing the attachment in a predetermined second storage means and generating link information to the attachment;
Arranging means for arranging link information to each of the attachments stored in the second storage means in accordance with predetermined attribute information of the attachments; and link information to each of the attachments arranged by the arranging means. And a list creating means for creating a list description in which the link information to the attached electronic mail is described in association with the electronic mail.

[0010] In a preferred aspect, the attachment processing means determines whether or not the attachment is attached by a user instruction based on attribute information (eg, file type, title, creator name, etc.) of the attachment included in the e-mail. If it is determined that the attachment is not attached by a user instruction,
Canceling registration of the attachment in the second storage means.

In another preferred aspect, the list creation means incorporates, into the list description, display information defined in advance according to the type of the attachment as information indicating display content of the link information of the attachment. .

Further, the electronic mail list display device according to the present invention provides an electronic mail including an attachment.
There is means for displaying link information to the attachment in association with the subject of the mail.

[0013]

Embodiments of the present invention (hereinafter referred to as embodiments) will be described below with reference to the drawings.

In this embodiment, an example will be described in which an electronic mail group exchanged between users in a mailing list is converted into an electronic bulletin board. FIG. 1 shows an example of a list page 100 of an electronic bulletin board provided by the apparatus of the present embodiment.

The list page 100 contains, for each e-mail, the subject (subject, title) 1 of the e-mail.
10 and bibliographic items 1 such as source address and reception date and time
15 are listed and shown. The subject 110 has an H representing the content (text and header information) of the electronic mail.
A link to the TML file is set. In the electronic bulletin board list page 100 of the present embodiment, a subject 110 and a bibliographic item 115 are attached to an electronic mail having an attachment (attached file, attached data).
In the vicinity of the display, links 120a and 120b to the file of the attachment are shown. In this example,
Link displays 120a and 120b to the attachment file are shown next to the subject 110.

That is, in the apparatus of this embodiment, the attachments attached to the e-mail are stored in the database as files, and the addresses and the like of the files in the database are displayed as link information in the link displays 120a and 120b. It is set in association.

This list page 100 is displayed on a web browser.
By clicking on the display of the subject 110 with a mouse or the like, the user viewing the web page can view a web page indicating the content of the corresponding e-mail, and display a link 120a or 120
By clicking b, the contents of the file can be browsed.

Note that the distinction between the link displays 120a and 120b to the attachment in the illustrated example indicates the distinction of the application that created the attachment. For example, a link display 120a ([W]) indicates an attachment created by predetermined word processor software, and a link display 120b ([D]) indicates an attachment created by CAD software. The display form of the link display of these attachments to the file is determined in advance for each application that is assumed to be attached. An apparatus for creating an electronic bulletin board employs a link display in a display form according to an application for creating an attachment (which can be determined from an extension of a file of the attachment or the like) in accordance with the predetermined rule.

The link display 120 shown in FIG.
With only a and 120b, only the information of the attachment creation application can be obtained. As an improvement to this, for example, a link display 12 of an attachment of interest is provided.
When the mouse pointer 140 is overlaid on 0a or 120b,
For example, the directory path 155 of the attachment storage file set in association with the link display may be displayed in the status column 150 of the browser window. Of course, instead of or in addition to the directory path 155, it is also possible to display other explanatory information of the attachment.

As described above, in this embodiment, in the list page 100, a display linked to the contents of each e-mail (subject 110) and a display linked to the attachment attached to the e-mail (link display 120a) , 120b) are displayed close to each other, so that the link display 120 on the list page 100 is displayed.
By clicking a or 120b, it becomes possible to directly access the attached attachment without going through the page of the content of the e-mail. This allows the user to take the work flow of first looking at the attachment and then referring to the mail text as needed. Also, in a situation where the transition of the design drawings only needs to be known in the development department or the like, the attachments of the drawings can be viewed in order by following the link display 120b from the list page 100 in order. Eliminate the hassle of opening emails to view drawings. Also, in the conventional technology in which a link to an attachment is only included in the body of an e-mail, the electronic bulletin board alone cannot determine which e-mail the attachment is attached to, and there is a risk of overlooking. However, in the present embodiment, a link display 120 to the attachment is displayed on the list page 100.
Since a and b are arranged, such oversight can be greatly reduced.

Next, an apparatus configuration for creating the above-described list page 100 and a procedure for creating the same will be described with reference to FIGS. 2 and 3. FIG.

In the apparatus of the present embodiment shown in FIG. 2, the web server 20 is an apparatus for providing a web page to a user's browser device via the Internet (and / or intranet) 30. Here, it is assumed that the web server 20 provides a page of an electronic bulletin board in which electronic mails stored in a predetermined mailing list are arranged and displayed as a list. H of each page constituting this electronic bulletin board
TML and other files are stored in a file DB (database) 22.

The electronic mail storage processor 10, the attachment storage processor 12, the list page generator 14, and the link information DB 16 are processing units for registering the data of the web page group for displaying the electronic bulletin board in the file DB 22. is there. In this device, an electronic mail group to be posted on an electronic bulletin board is given to the electronic mail storage processing unit 10 and the attachment storage processing unit 12,
An electronic bulletin board including the list page 100 illustrated in FIG. 1 is constructed. For example, by inputting a mailbox file holding a group of target e-mails into this device (instructing a file name), the e-mails can be processed into an electronic bulletin board format.

The e-mail storage processing unit 10 provides an HTM indicating the contents (text and header information) of each given e-mail.
The file is converted into an L file and stored in the file DB 22. The attachment storage processing unit 12 extracts the attachment from the electronic mail, and stores the attachment data as a file in the file DB 22.

At this time, the electronic mail storage processing unit 1
0 and each time the attachment storage processing unit 12 processes the e-mail, the link information (address and the like) indicating the file of the e-mail content stored in the file DB 22 and the attachment file attached to the e-mail are stored. Link information to point to (if any)
Are stored in the link information DB 16 in association with each other.

The list page creation unit 14 generates the link information D
Based on the link information stored in B16, a web page for list display as shown in FIG. 1 is created for access to the e-mail group (and attachment) and stored in the file DB 22.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of this apparatus. In this processing procedure, first, one unprocessed e-mail is extracted from a given e-mail group (mail box or the like) (S10). Next, the e-mail storage processing unit 10 converts the contents of the e-mail (can be targeted only for the text, or for the text and header information) into HTML format (S12). The file in the HTML format is stored in the file DB 22 (S14). Then, the e-mail storage processing unit 10
Link information to the file of the e-mail content stored in the file DB 22 is created (S16), and registered in the link information DB 16 (S18). The link information created here is, for example, a set of the subject and bibliographic items (sender and date) of the e-mail and a pointer (address information) to the storage location of the e-mail content file in the file DB 22.

On the other hand, the attachment storage processing unit 10
It is determined whether the e-mail acquired in S10 includes an attachment (S20).
The data of the attachment portion is extracted from the electronic mail (S22), and the data is stored as a file in the file DB 22 (S24). Then, link information for the stored attachment file is created (S26), and the link information is associated with the link information to the electronic mail content file stored in S18, and the link information DB 22
(S28). When a plurality of attachments are attached to one email, S22 to S28 may be repeated by the number of attachments.

When the processing of S22 to S28 is completed for all the attachments attached to one e-mail, the process proceeds to S30. If it is determined in S20 that the attachment is not attached to the e-mail,
The process skips S22 to S28 and immediately proceeds to S30.

In S30, it is determined whether there is any unprocessed e-mail. If there is any unprocessed e-mail (the determination result in S30 is N), the process returns to S10.

When the above processing is completed for all the target e-mails (the determination result in S30 is Y), the link page creation unit 14 executes the processing shown in FIG. 1 based on the link information stored in the link information DB 16. An HTML file representing the list page shown in (1) is created (S32). In the HTML file created at this time, link information to the contents file of each e-mail is listed, and for e-mails including attachments, the link information to the file of the attachment is indicated by a link to the e-mail contents file. It is described in association with information. For example,
In the HTML file for display of FIG. 1, the address of the content file of the e-mail is set as a link in the character string of the e-mail subject, and then a link display indicating the attachment (for example, the character string “[W]”) And the like, and setting the address of the file of the attachment in the file DB 22 as a link for the link display.

When the HTML file of the list page describing the link information for all the target e-mails is completed, the list page creating unit 14 stores the file in the file DB 22 (S34). Above,
The electronic bulletin board processing of the mailing list is completed.

Note that the processing (S
12 to S18) and processing related to the attachment (S20)
To S28) may be performed first, and can be performed in parallel in principle. However, in the link information storage processing (S18, S28), the link information relating to the attachment and the link information to the content of the e-mail attached with the attachment are stored in the link information DB 16 in association with each other. It is necessary.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described above.
As described above, in this embodiment, the attachment can be accessed directly from the mail list page in the electronic bulletin board for disclosing the electronic mail group of the mailing list, so that the access to the attachment is facilitated.

It should be noted that, depending on the mailer software,
There is also a file in which an HTML file of a mail body is automatically attached to the electronic mail. Such attachments automatically attached by software are generally of low importance. Therefore, it is preferable to determine whether the attachment is explicitly attached by the mail creator or automatically attached by a mailer or the like, and the latter is preferably not posted on the list page 100 of the electronic bulletin board. is there.

Several methods are conceivable for determining whether or not the file is explicitly attached by the user. One method is to look at the creator information of the attachment and determine whether it is software (a mailer or the like) or the name of the user. In the latter case, it is determined that the attachment is explicitly attached by the user. This method can be realized by a system in which the creator information of the attachment is included in the electronic mail (or in the data of the attachment therein).

Another method is to check the title of the attachment. In the case of an attachment automatically attached by a mailer, many mailers use the same character string or a part of the subject of the attached e-mail as the title of the attachment.Therefore, using this, a title similar to the subject of the e-mail is used. The attachment is determined to be automatically attached.

On the list page of the electronic bulletin board shown in FIG. 1, e-mails are displayed in chronological order. However, this is merely an example, and various convenient list page forms are possible within the scope of the present invention.

For example, the example shown in FIG. 4 is a display example of an electronic bulletin board list page 100a in a thread display in which electronic mails are arranged in thread order. The thread display is
It expresses the derivation (parent-child) relationship of e-mail.
If someone replies to an email, the reply email is a child of the original email. In the example of FIG.
For a subject 110a of a certain mail, the subject 110b of the reply mail to the mail is displayed one step lower, and similarly, the subject 110c of the reply to the mail is displayed one step lower than that. 1
A whole mail group derived from one mail by such a relationship as a reply is a thread. In the example of FIG. 4, two threads 160a and 160b are shown. Then, in the example of FIG. 4, in the thread display, a link display 120a or 120b to an attachment included in the electronic mail is displayed in proximity to a display item (subject or the like) of each electronic mail.

Those skilled in the art will understand that the source HTML file of the list page 100a shown in FIG. 4 can be easily created by substantially the same processing as the page shown in FIG. That is, in S32, the link to the e-mail content file and the link to the attachment file stored in the link information DB 16 are arranged not based on the date and time but based on the thread relation, and the step down such that the relation is expressed. Such a designation may be appropriately incorporated.

FIG. 4 shows a list page in chronological order shown in FIG.
It is also preferable to provide both of the thread display list pages shown in FIG. In this case, for example, it is preferable that the list page 100a of the thread display can be called from the link 130 of the list page 100 displayed in chronological order, and the list page 100 can be called from the link 135 of the list page 100a.

As another example of the thread display, there is a list page 100b shown in FIG. In the example of FIG. 4, link displays 120a and 120b to the attachments attached thereto are displayed for each e-mail, whereas in this example, link displays 125a to 125c of the attachments are displayed in thread units. That is, the link displays 125a to 125c of the attachments of the e-mail belonging to one thread are displayed collectively. In this example, the link displays 125a to 125c to each attachment in the same thread are arranged and displayed in order of date and time from the top. In addition, each link display 125a-c
Indicates the file name of the attachment. However, this is not indispensable, and may be a display form according to the type of the created application as shown in FIG. 1, and a specific symbol indicating only that there is an attachment,
It may be a figure or the like. In any case, more detailed attachment information can be provided using the status column 150 or the like as in the example of FIG. In the display format of FIG. 5, it is not known from the list page 100b which e-mail the attachment was attached to, but the link displays 125a to 125c to the attachments of one thread are displayed collectively. It is easier to find itself, and the risk of oversight is reduced.

The list pages exemplified above are all arranged on the basis of electronic mail. On the other hand, a list page arranged on the basis of attachments is also useful. This example is shown in FIG. In the list page 200 shown in FIG. 6, a link display 2 to the attachment is displayed.
20 are arranged and displayed separately for each of the creation applications, and associated with the link display 220, an e-mail subject 210 (link to mail contents) and a bibliographic item 215 corresponding to the attachment.
Is displayed. The list page 200 has an advantage that, when an attachment to be viewed is determined, the attachment can be quickly found. Also,
This is also convenient when, for example, the attachment can be identified and the user wants to refer to the contents of the e-mail attached to the attachment. In this example, a file name is used for the attachment link display 220, but an example in which a mark indicating an application type is used instead may be considered. It is also preferable to add detailed information such as creation date and time and creator to the file name.
Further, in this example, the attachments are classified and displayed for each creation application. However, the attachments may be classified and displayed according to other attributes (for example, creation date and time, mail reception date and time, creator and mail sender).

In the above, the case where the mailing list is converted into an electronic bulletin board has been described as an example. However, it is easily understood that the same processing can be performed on a general electronic mail group other than the mailing list. There will be.

In addition, displaying the link to the attachment included in the e-mail on the list display screen of the link to the e-mail in association with the link of the attachment destination e-mail is equivalent to the in-box or the out-tray in the mailer software. It can be applied to display and is useful.
For example, the mailer may inspect the mail text and, if an attachment is included therein, generate a link to the attachment and display the link on the tray screen.

The apparatus described above can be typically realized by executing a program describing the above-described functions or processing procedures on a computer system. This program is available on CD-ROM and D
It can be provided in a form stored in a VD-ROM, a floppy (registered trademark) disk, or other computer-readable recording medium. Then, by installing the program from the medium into a fixed disk device of the computer, the device of the present embodiment can be configured.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a display example of an electronic bulletin board (display in order of date and time) according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration example of a device according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of the apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a display example of an electronic bulletin board (thread display) according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a display example of an electronic bulletin board (thread display) according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a display example of an electronic bulletin board (display in the order of attachment) according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

100, 200 list pages, 110, 210 subjects, 115, 215 bibliographic items, 120, 22
0 Link display.

Claims (11)

[Claims] 1. A mail processing means for storing given e-mails in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to the stored e-mails, and when the e-mails have an attachment, Attachment processing means for storing link information to the attachment stored in a predetermined second storage means and creating a list description for displaying a list of link information to each e-mail stored in the first storage means A link list for displaying the link information to the attachment stored in the second storage means in association with the link information to the electronic mail, the link information to the electronic mail having the attachment. An e-mail list creation device, comprising: a list creation means for creating a description. 2. A mail processing means for storing given e-mails in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to the stored e-mails, and when the e-mail has an attachment, Attachment processing means for storing link information to the attachment stored in a predetermined second storage means, means for organizing the e-mail group into one or more threads based on derivation relations, and first storage means Means for creating a list description for displaying the link information to the e-mail stored in the list in a format reflecting the thread, the link information to the attachment stored in the second storage means,
A list creation means for creating a list description described in association with the thread to which the corresponding email belongs. 3. A mail processing means for storing each given e-mail in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to each of the stored e-mails, and when the e-mail has an attachment, Attachment processing means which is stored in a predetermined second storage means and generates link information to the attachment, and link information to each attachment stored in the second storage means is arranged in accordance with predetermined attribute information of the attachment. Arrangement means; and list creation means for creating a list description in which the link information to each of the attachments arranged by the arrangement means is described in association with the link information to the e-mail to which the attachment is attached. E-mail list creation device. 4. The attachment processing means determines whether or not the attachment is attached by a user's instruction from the attribute information of the attachment included in the e-mail, and the attachment is not attached by a user's instruction. The electronic mail list creation device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein when it is determined that the attachment is not registered in the second storage unit. 5. The list creation means according to claim 2, wherein said list description means incorporates, into said list description, display information defined in advance according to a type of said attachment as information indicating display contents of said link information of said attachment. 3. The e-mail list creation device according to 1 or 2. 6. An apparatus for creating list display information for displaying a list of subjects of each target e-mail, wherein for an e-mail including an attachment, link information to the attachment is associated with the subject. An e-mail list creation device for creating list display information incorporating a description for displaying a list. 7. An apparatus for displaying a list of subjects of each electronic mail as a target, the electronic mail including an attachment having means for displaying link information to the attachment in association with the subject. Characteristic e-mail list display device. 8. A mail processing means for storing a given e-mail in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to each of the stored e-mails, wherein the e-mail has an attachment. Attachment processing means for storing the information in predetermined second storage means and generating link information to the attachment, and list description for displaying a list of link information to each electronic mail stored in the first storage means. Means for creating, for the link information to the e-mail having the attachment, for displaying the link information to the attachment stored in the second storage means in association with the link information to the e-mail A program for functioning as a list creation means for creating a list description. 9. A mail processing means for storing a given e-mail in a predetermined first storage means and generating link information to each of the stored e-mails, wherein the e-mail has an attachment. Attachment processing means for storing it in predetermined second storage means and generating link information to the attachment, means for organizing the e-mail group into one or more threads based on derivation relations, and said first storage means Means for creating a list description for displaying the link information to the e-mail stored in the list in a format reflecting the thread, the link information to the attachment stored in the second storage means,
A list creating means for creating a list description described in association with the thread to which the corresponding e-mail belongs. 10. A computer, comprising: a mail processing unit configured to store each given e-mail in a predetermined first storage unit and generate link information to each of the stored e-mails; Attachment processing means for storing it in predetermined second storage means and generating link information to the attachment, and arranging the link information to each attachment stored in the second storage means in accordance with predetermined attribute information of those attachments A list creating unit that creates a list description that describes the link information to each of the attachments arranged by the arraying unit in association with the link information to the e-mail to which the attachment is attached. Program to let you. 11. A recording medium on which the program according to claim 8 is recorded.