JPH07143162A - Electronic mail delivery equipment and circulation order changing method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide an electronic mail delivery equipment in which mail circulation is smoothed without stagnation and a sender always grasps it to which a circulated mail is circulated by changing the circulation order of the circulation mail on the way of circulation so as to delay the circulation order of absent persons. CONSTITUTION:Upon the receipt of a circulation mail, a mail reception function 12 of an electronic mail delivery equipment 2-1 returns a reception notice to a sender electronic mail delivery equipment sending the mail at first and serves the received circulation mail to a recipient B. When the recipient B desires to change a recipient to which the mail is circulated succeedingly, the succeeding circulation recipient is designated. Thus, when a re-transmission circulation mail transmission processing section 112 generates the circulation mail for re-transmission, the circulation order of a circulation list is changed and the circulation mail is sent to the changed succeeding circulation recipient.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail delivery device having a function of circulating electronic mail between a plurality of electronic mail delivery devices and a method of changing a circulating order, and more particularly to an electronic mail delivery order and notification of receipt.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, one sentence is circulated among a plurality of electronic mail delivery devices. In the circulation of this e-mail, the user who receives the circulation mail (which is the circulation of the e-mail) sends it to the next recipient according to the circulation list. Therefore, circular mails are sequentially transmitted between the electronic mail delivery devices according to the circular list from the user who is the sender of the electronic mail first, and finally returns to the user of the sender. By the way, in the above-described conventional circulation by e-mail, the order of circulating the e-mail is predetermined, and it is impossible to change this in the middle. Therefore, when one user receives a circulation mail and tries to send the circulation mail to the user in the next order, even if it is known that the next user is not going out or on a business trip, Had to send a circular mail to the person. Therefore, until the next recipient goes out or returns from a business trip destination, the circulation mail is stopped at this user, and the circulation of the electronic mail is delayed. In such a case, if you can change the order of circulating emails,
It is possible to smoothly circulate this mail by avoiding stagnation of circulation mail by skipping circulation users who are known not to be present and circulating it to the existing circulation users first. become. However, in the system using the conventional electronic mail delivery device, the circulation order cannot be changed in the middle as described above.

When circulating the above-mentioned e-mail,
The recipient who receives the circulation mail sends a reception notification to the sender of the circulation mail that is one before. Therefore, since the sender immediately before receives the receipt notification, it is possible to confirm whether or not the circulation mail has arrived safely. However, the receipt notification is sent to the sender who first circulates the circulation mail. Since it was not sent, the sender had the drawback that he could not know how far the circulation mail was circulated. Therefore, when the circulation mail does not come back easily, there is a drawback that it is not possible to quickly grasp where the circulation mail has stopped.

[0004]

In the conventional electronic mail communication system, the circulation order when circulating the electronic mails among a plurality of electronic mail delivery apparatuses is predetermined, and this order may be changed during the circulation. could not. Therefore, even if it is known in advance that the user at the next circulation destination is absent, the e-mail has to be transmitted to this circulation destination. In such a case, since the circulation mail is delayed at the user who is absent, there is a drawback that the circulation of the mail is delayed. or,
Since the recipient of the above-mentioned conventional circulation mail returns the reception notification to the sender immediately before, there is a drawback that the first sender of the circulation mail cannot directly know how far the circulation mail has been circulated. there were.

Therefore, the present invention eliminates the above-mentioned drawbacks and allows the circulation order of circulation mails to be changed during circulation,
By slowing the circulation order of absentees, the circulation of the circulation mail can be smoothly performed, and the first sender can always know how far the circulation mail has been circulated. An object is to provide an apparatus and a circulation order changing method.

[0006]

The present invention provides a circulation function for transmitting an electronic mail to the next circulation destination defined by a circulation list indicating the circulation order sent together when the electronic mail is received. In the e-mail delivery device which has, an input means for inputting information for changing the circulation order of the received circulation list, and a creation means for creating a circulation list with the circulation order changed based on the information input from the input means. , Sending means for sending the e-mail to the next circulation destination shown in the circulation list created by the creating means, and sending the first e-mail shown in the circulation list when the e-mail is received And a return means for returning the receipt notification to the original.

[0007]

In the electronic mail delivery device of the present invention, the input means inputs information for changing the circulation order of the received circulation list. The creating means creates a circulation list in which the circulation order is changed based on the information input from the input means. The sending means sends the electronic mail to the next circulation destination indicated by the circulation list created by the creating means. Upon receiving the e-mail, the return means returns a reception notification to the sender who originally sent the e-mail, which is indicated in the circulation list.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of an electronic mail delivery device of the present invention. Reference numerals 1-1 and 1-2 are e-mail delivery devices that can send and receive e-mail and provide a circulation mail service. Each of the above e-mail delivery devices has a mail transmission function 11 including a circulation mail transmission processing unit 111 and a re-transmission circulation mail transmission processing unit 112, receives a circulation mail, returns a reception notification to the sender, and receives the circulation mail. It has a mail receiving function 12 that prompts the presentation to the user and the transmission of the circulation mail when the user is not the final circulation recipient.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration example of the circulation mail. It consists of the recipient's name, circulation list, and email body.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a detailed example of the circulation list shown in FIG. A circulation order change permission / prohibition flag is provided at the top, and circulation recipient information 1 to n are described thereafter. Each piece of circulation recipient information is composed of a circulation status flag indicating that it has not been circulated and has been circulated, and a circulation recipient name.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described. First, the sender A of the circulation mail sends a circulation mail as shown in FIG. 2 by using a man-machine interface (not shown) connected to the circulation mail transmission processing unit 111 of the electronic mail delivery device 1-1. Issue a request to create. This allows
The circulation mail transmission processing unit 111 creates a circulation mail based on a circulation list, a mail body, a circulation order change permission / prohibition flag and the like designated by the sender. At this time, the circulation mail is created with the circulation recipient name at the head of the circulation list as shown in FIG. 3 as the destination name. After that, the circulation mail transmission processing unit 111 reads out the destination information corresponding to the destination name, connects the line based on the destination information, and sends the circulation mail to the electronic mail delivery device (here, the electronic mail delivery device 1-2. And send) to. The destination information corresponding to the destination name is assumed to be registered in the circulation mail transmission processing unit 111 in advance.

The mail receiving function 12 of the electronic mail delivery device 1-2 (to be exact, the operation of the circulation mail reception processing function 121 shown in FIG. 6) receives the circulation mail sent from the electronic mail delivery device 1-1. Receive and display it on the man-machine interface or the like. At this time, the recipient of the electronic mail delivery device 1-2 reads the text of the circular mail,
If the circulation order change permission flag is set on the circulation list, the next circulation recipient can be changed to an order different from the order shown in the original circulation list, if necessary. For example, if the sender of the electronic mail delivery device 1-1 is A
If the recipient of the electronic mail delivery device 1-2 is B, then it is assumed that Mr. C has already determined the circulation order of the initial circulation list. However, Mr. B knows that Mr. C is out, and if he knows that he will send the circulation mail to Mr. C and it will stop there, Mr. B will select the next circulation recipient as Mr. D. Can be changed to Therefore, recipient B uses the man-machine interface to enter the recipient name of the next circulation destination in the circulation list to D.
After setting the email delivery device 2
-2, start the re-circulation mail transmission processing unit 112,
Make a request to send a circular mail to the next recipient.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the operation of the retransmitted circulation mail transmission processing unit 12 which has received the circulation mail transmission request. First, in step 401, permission to change the circulation order of the circulation list passed from the mail receiving function 12 /
The prohibition flag is checked to determine whether or not there is circulation order change permission. If not, the process proceeds to step 406, and if yes, the process proceeds to step 402. In step 402, it is determined whether or not there is a request from the recipient to change the circulation destination. If not, the process proceeds to step 406, and if there is, the process proceeds to step 403. At step 403, the designated circulation recipient is searched from the circulation recipients whose circulation status flag in the circulation list is uncirculated, and the next circulation destination is determined.
Go to step 404. In step 404, the next circulation recipient is set to the head of the circulation list (ordinarily, if it is the head), the re-transmission circulation mail is created. Next, in step 405, the destination information corresponding to the name of the first circulation recipient on the circulation list in the created circulation mail is read out, the generated circulation mail is transmitted based on this destination information, and then the processing is performed. finish. On the other hand, step 406
If the process proceeds to step 404, after the first recipient whose circulation status flag in the circulation list has not been circulated is determined as the recipient of the next circulation destination, the process proceeds to step 404.

By the way, FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a detailed example of the mail receiving function shown in FIG. The mail reception function 12 has a circulation mail reception processing function 121 and a reception notification processing unit 122. When the circulation mail reception processing function 121 of the mail reception function 12 receives the circulation mail 100, the circulation mail 100 is displayed on the man-machine interface and presented to the recipient as described above, and if the recipient is not the final circulation recipient, it is received. The notification processing unit 122 is activated.
The reception notification processing unit 122 creates a reception notification 200 addressed to the sender name of the first circulation mail set in the circulation mail received in step 601 shown in FIG. It is returned to the electronic mail delivery device 1-1 which is the sender. FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the flow of the reception notification of this example. As is clear from this figure, when a circulation mail is received in this example, each electronic mail delivery device in the middle of circulation returns a reception notification 200 to the electronic mail delivery device 1-1 of the transmission source.

According to this embodiment, even if the recipient is in the middle of circulating the electronic mail, the order of circulating the electronic mail can be changed. Therefore, the recipient who is known to be absent can be skipped for the time being. Since the e-mail can be circulated to the circulation destination, the delay in the circulation of the e-mail can be reduced and the circulation can be smoothly performed. Further, since the e-mail delivery device that has received the e-mail returns the receipt notification to the e-mail delivery device 1-1 that is the origin of the circulation, the sender of the e-mail directly determines how far the e-mail is circulated. In addition, it is possible to know promptly, and when the stagnation of the e-mail occurs, appropriate measures can be immediately taken.

[0016]

As described above, according to the electronic mail delivery device of the present invention, the circulation order of circulation mails can be changed in the middle of circulation so that the circulation order of the absentees can be delayed, thereby circulating the mails. This allows the sender to know how far the circulation mail has been circulated, and enables the sender to always know how much the circulation mail has been circulated.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of an electronic mail delivery device of the present invention.

2 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a circulation mail circulated by the apparatus of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a detailed example of a circulation list in the circulation mail shown in FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of a re-circulation mail processing unit shown in FIG. 1 that receives a circulation mail transmission request.

5 is a block diagram showing a detailed example of a mail receiving function shown in FIG.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation of the reception notification processing unit shown in FIG.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a flow of a reception notification of this example.

[Explanation of symbols]

1-1, 1-2 ... E-mail delivery device 11 ... E-mail transmission function 12 ... E-mail reception function 111 ... Circular e-mail transmission processing unit 112 ... Re-transmission Circular e-mail transmission processing unit 121 ... Circular e-mail reception processing function 122 ... Reception notification processing Department

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An electronic mail delivery device having a circulation function of transmitting the electronic mail to the next circulation destination defined by a circulation list indicating the circulation order sent together with the electronic mail, An input means for inputting information for changing the circulation order of the received circulation list, a creation means for creating a circulation list with the circulation order changed based on the information input from the input means, and a creation means created by the creation means And an e-mail delivery device for transmitting the e-mail to the next circulation destination indicated in the circulation list. 2. The electronic device according to claim 1, further comprising: a return unit that, when the electronic mail is received, returns a reception notification to the sender who originally sent the electronic mail, which is shown in the circulation list. Mail delivery device. 3. In an e-mail communication system having a function of circulating an e-mail sent from a sender among a plurality of e-mail delivery devices, the circulation order of the e-mail is changed by the e-mail delivery device in the middle of circulation. A method for changing the circulation order, which is characterized by performing the subsequent circulation.