KR20040071813A - Method of e-mail service improved in displaying mail list - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to an e-mail service method, and provides a mail service method in which received mails and sent mails are grouped together for each other to send and receive mail.

Description

Method of e-mail service improved in displaying mail list}

The present invention relates to an electronic mail service method, and more particularly to a mailbox system.

In the past, the inbox and the sent box were provided separately so that users could check their inbox and sent letter in different mailboxes.

Recently, the email system has become an important means for various businesses, the mailbox system of the above method is very inconvenient. When I try to look at the history of a task or personal relationship, I often look at the letters I send and receive in that order, which is inconvenient with the conventional mailbox system.

In the conventional method, using the automatic classification function, it is possible to automatically sort letters by task, but the automatic classification function is applied only to the received letter. Also, even if you keep them in the mailbox by task, the letters are sorted by date, so if you have letters from multiple counterparts in one mailbox, it will be inconvenient to see them by history. However, it is inconvenient to create and use a new mailbox every time a new opponent is created.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to create a mailbox system to solve the inconvenience and to conveniently examine the letters with a specific counterpart in order.

1 is an example of a screen for providing a mailbox in the web according to the present invention.

2 is a list screen according to a conventional mailbox system.

3 is a block diagram of an electronic mail system according to the present invention.

4 is a flowchart illustrating a data sorting flow for outputting a user mailbox list according to the present invention.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is an example of a screen for providing a mailbox in the web according to the present invention.

The mailbox system according to the present invention does not have an inbox and an outbox as can be seen in the left menu of FIG. 1. In this example, as shown in the left menu, the letter is divided into friend letters, work letters, newsletters, and spam mails according to the nature of the contents. Whether it is sending or receiving a work letter or sending a site newsletter. That is, automatic classification based on address is specified. For example, if a user designates an email address of Yi Sun-shin, a friend, as a friend inbox, all letters coming and going with Yi Sun-sin are stored in the friend's inbox by that date. However, since the number of friends who usually share a letter is usually several people, the list of letters is gathered and displayed together so that the other parties can easily see the letters that can be mixed. Looking at the example screen of Figure 1 it can be easily seen how easy to take care of the letters sent and received for each other. The arrow next to the title is a sign of the letter sent. The plus sign displayed to the left of the other person's name in the list indicates that you can click to see a list of letters sent and received with the other person in the list.

2 is a list screen according to a conventional mailbox system.

The same letters as the example of FIG. 1 are stored in the mailbox, but the example is a list displayed in a conventional manner. In Figure 2, since the letters received from several people are sorted only by date, it is still inconvenient to pick and pick letters with a specific counterpart, and it is difficult to distinguish which letter was sent to which letter was sent. Very uncomfortable

Hereinafter, a description will be given of a technique for implementing the present invention.

3 is a block diagram of an electronic mail system according to the present invention.

The mail system receives a mail delivered from REMOTE or LOCAL, a mail receiver 10 for storing mail in the mail queue 15, a mail queue 15, a mail queue (15), which is a place where mails are sequentially stacked to receive mails. 15) take out the mail to send and send it to the corresponding mail server 20, the mail delivery section 25 to take out the mail from the mail queue (15) and deliver it to the corresponding mailbox (35), sender email address And the address book 30 to which the mailbox is designated, the mailbox 35 where mail is finally delivered and stored to each user, the mail list output unit 50 to show a list of the mail stored in the mailbox 35, and the mail. Among the e-mails output by the list output unit 50, an e-mail body output unit 55 for showing the body of the e-mail selected by the user, an e-mail creation unit 45 for allowing the user to compose e-mails, and an e-mail creation unit ( Mail created in 45 is mail queue (15) ) And a mail sending section 40 for sending mail by the mail sending section 20.

When a user composes a mail using the mail creation unit 45 and sends the mail, the mail sending unit 40 stores the created mail in the mail queue 15, and also in the address book 30, the recipient's address and the classified address. The mailbox information is retrieved and a copy of the created mail is stored in the mailbox. If the recipient information is not in the address book 30, it is stored as a default designated mailbox. For example, if a user composes and sends a 'a' to 'man@hotmail.com', the mail sending unit 40 searches for 'man@hotmail.com' in the address book 30, and the corresponding mailbox 'workbox' Obtain the information, and copy the mail 'a' to the 'business inbox'. Here, if there is no information of 'man@hotmail.com' in the address book 30, a copy is stored in the designated 'friend mailbox' by default.

The mail list output unit 50 does not distinguish between the received letter and the sent letter, grouped by the counterpart, grouped, sorted by date, and output.

This has been illustrated with reference to FIG. 1, and the e-mail list output method according to the present invention will be described in more detail.

4 is a flowchart illustrating a data sorting flow for outputting a user mailbox list according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In step 100, the mail list output section 50 opens the mailbox 35 to read the list of letters.

The mail list of the mailbox 35 opened in step 110 is read into the first buffer.

In step 120, the 'sent mail' is found in the mail list, and the mail ID is recorded in the second buffer.

In step 130, sorting is performed based on the latest date order condition 1 and the other party condition 2 in the mail list of the first buffer and stored in the third buffer in the sort order. The other party is the sender if the 'inbox', and the recipient if the 'sent'.

In step 140, when the contents of the third buffer are output on the screen in order, 'received letters' and 'sent letters' for each counterpart are grouped and bundled with the latest date.

In order to output as shown in FIG. 1, the third buffer is processed in an array. For example

If you write a two-dimensional array like 'A [] []', the first value of the secondary index, A [] [0], is the latest letter of each group. In addition, if the number of primary indexes, that is, A [10] [], it is 11 groups from 0 to 10. Each array contains a mail ID. Therefore, in order to process as shown in FIG. 1, A [] [0] is sequentially listed, and if each message is a 'sent letter', a corresponding icon (up arrow) is displayed to distinguish it from the 'inbox' and the number of secondary indexes. If one or more is found, the icon (+ Table) is displayed. If the user clicks (+ Table), the array is printed out, and the icon (+ Table) is displayed as (-Table). will be. If you click (-Table) again, only the first mail ID of the secondary index of the array is displayed on the screen, and (-Table) is replaced with (+ Table).

In order to reduce the load on the mail system, the sorted information and the 'sent mail' information of each mail are stored in the corresponding mailbox as an indexing file. Since the indexing file is not changed until a new letter arrives, the mail list output unit 50 can directly reduce the load of the system by directly outputting the list by referring to the indexing file without going through the process of FIG. 4. Of course, when a new letter arrives, it is newly indexed through the process as shown in FIG. 4, and the indexing file is updated and used later. Of course, instead of the process of FIG. 4, when a mail is received or written and sent, the information of the corresponding mailbox, sender, recipient, mail ID (file name, etc.), received date, and sent mail is stored in a database whenever it is stored in the mailbox. If necessary, the result value can be obtained by sorting by date and counterpart. By storing the result in an indexing file, you get the same effect as described above.

The following example shows the contents of an indexing file.

This is an indexing file.

#Sequence: E-mail file name: E-mail no: Date: Check sent mail: Check latest mail group

1: your@mail.com: 1234093.mail;, S: 13: 200301021343: Y: Y

2: your@mail.com: 8981348.mail;, FS: 22: 200301011211: N: N

3: hong@sam.cha: 1234929.mail; S: 24: 200301012048: N: Y

4: hong@sam.cha: 092090.mail; S: 21: 200212281243: N: N

:

:

In the contents of the indexing file, the corresponding icon of 'sent mail' is displayed by the y and n values of the 'check sent mail' field, and the latest letter for each counterpart (group) by the yn value of the 'check group latest mail' field. To distinguish between.

As described above, the present invention has an effect of making it easy to know the mail traffic history for each task, counterpart.

Claims (2)

In the email service method, A mailbox designation process in which a mailbox is designated for each sender and receiver, A mail receiving process for receiving mail from the other party, A received mail storing process of storing the received mail in a mailbox designated in the mailbox designation process; Sending mail to the other party, An outgoing mail storing process of storing a copy of the outgoing mail in a mailbox designated in the mailbox designation process; A mail list sorting process for sorting the stored mails by the counterpart and by the receiving date; When the subscriber opens the mailbox, the received mail, sent mail, read mail, unread mail are displayed in order of sorting in the mail list sorting process, and command means for selecting mail, reading mail, deleting mail, etc. The mailbox output process to display and display on the screen, A mail content output process of outputting the content of the mail when a specific mail is selected to be read on the mailbox output screen; And a mail deletion process of performing a deletion operation on a specific mail when a specific mail deletion operation is selected on the mailbox output screen. The method of claim 1, In the mailbox output process, if there are a plurality of mails in the list for each counterpart, displaying the remaining list viewing command means for displaying only the most recent mail as a representative and displaying the remaining list; And when the remaining list view is selected, displaying the remaining list on the screen, and displaying a remaining list hiding command means for hiding the remaining list again.