JPH11136278A - Electronic mail system, electronic mail transfer method, and recording medium recording electronic mail program - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [Problem] Automatically register information extracted from a received e-mail text in a personal information database, and determine whether or not transfer is required, transfer destination, transfer media, and transfer according to the content of the mail text. Be able to determine data content. A text analysis means for analyzing an e-mail text in a mail server and extracting schedule / ToDo information (information to be done), a keyword, and a summary.
13, means 15 for registering personal information obtained from the analysis result of the e-mail text in personal information database 19, and schedule / ToD
o A rule management means 14 that manages a rule database 18 that can specify the presence or absence of information and the topic, and can specify not only the entire text but also only keywords and summaries extracted from mail as transfer contents according to the type of media to be transferred. The mail transfer means 12 controls transfer of mail using these means.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to Japanese document processing and an electronic mail system using the same, and more particularly, to an electronic mail system for transferring mail in accordance with the contents of received electronic mail, The present invention relates to a technique for determining data contents to be transferred according to media and a technique for notifying a sender of a mail transfer status.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there are the following two methods for automatically transferring an electronic mail. In the first method, the conditions of the mail to be transferred (sender, subject, arrival time) and the mail address of the transfer destination are registered as rules in the mail transmission / reception program on the user terminal in advance, and the user terminal accesses the mail server. Every time the mail transfer rule is applied to newly arrived mail.

In a second method, a mail transfer rule is managed on the server side, a newly arrived mail is periodically checked, and the mail transfer rule is applied. This method solves the problem of the first method, in which the user terminal must always be started up.

[0004] As a further improved mail transfer method, personal information such as user schedule information is also managed on the server side, and the transfer destination and transfer media (facsimile apparatus, pager, etc.) are controlled in accordance with the schedule of the recipient. ) (Morihara et al. "Intelligent mail service by mobile agent", IEICE OFS
95-41) have been proposed.

[0005]

In the conventional e-mail transfer method, the necessity of the transfer is determined only from the header information of the e-mail. It is not possible to determine the transfer destination and transfer medium according to the contents of the mail text such as "If a request with a time limit is received".

Further, in the second method, the transfer destination medium can be determined based on schedule information and the like. However, the data content to be transferred according to the type of the medium (for example, about 50 characters can be displayed for a pager, etc.) ) Cannot be determined.

The present invention solves the above-mentioned drawbacks of the conventional method, and determines whether or not transfer is necessary according to the content of the body of a received mail.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a means for determining a transfer destination and a transfer medium and a means for determining data content to be transferred according to the medium of the transfer destination. It is another object of the present invention to extract necessary information from a received e-mail text and automatically register the extracted information in a personal information database.

[0008]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention analyzes an e-mail text in a mail server and extracts schedule / ToDo information (information to be done), keywords and a summary. Having a text analysis means, a means for automatically registering personal information obtained from the analysis result of the e-mail text in the personal information database, being able to specify the presence / absence of schedule / ToDo information and the topic as the activation condition of the mail transfer rule, The main feature is that not only the entire text but also keywords and summaries extracted from the mail can be designated as transfer contents according to the type of the medium to be transferred.

The operation of the present invention is as follows. When the mail server receives the mail, the schedule / ToDo information, keywords, and summary are extracted using text analysis means and registered in the personal information database in the mail server, and the extracted information, the header information of the mail, and the user are extracted. The condition part of each mail transfer rule set by the above is collated to determine the necessity of transfer.

When transferring to a medium other than e-mail at the time of transfer, the entire text, only keywords, and only the summary are transferred according to the transfer contents set in the action part of the rule.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing an embodiment of the present invention. This figure shows one mail server 11, four user terminals 21A, 21B, 21C,
21D, a local area network (LAN) 31 for sending and receiving e-mails, a facsimile machine (FAX), a pager, and a public line network 32 for transferring e-mails to a telephone. Mail server, 5 or more user terminals, 2 or more FAs
X, a pager or a telephone may be used, and electronic mail may be transmitted and received via the public line network 32 without being limited to the LAN 31.

The mail server 11 includes a mail transfer unit 12 for transferring an incoming electronic mail, a text analysis unit 13 for analyzing an electronic mail text, a rule management unit 14 for setting a mail transfer rule from a user terminal, and a user terminal. , Personal information management means 15 for setting personal information such as schedule / ToDo information, address book, etc .; e-mail text data conversion according to the medium of the transfer destination; and FAX 41 and pager 42 of the transfer destination via public network 32. , The media converting means 16 for transmitting to the telephone 43,
A mail spool 17 in which arrived e-mails are stored,
A rule database 18 stores mail transfer rules set for each user, and a personal information database 19 stores personal information such as schedule / ToDo information.

The text analysis means 13 extracts, from the text data, a keyword composed of schedule information and ToDo information, a keyword representing a text topic, and a summary composed of a sentence including the keyword representing the topic. Techniques that are usually used in natural language processing systems such as information retrieval systems and text processing systems (eg, Sato et al., “Automatic digest generation of electronic news”, Journal of Information Processing, Vol.36, No.10, 1
995) can be used.

The data conversion required by the media conversion means 16 is based on techniques already used in the conventional mail transfer method (for example, Morihara et al., “Intelligent Mail Service by Mobile Agent”, Electronic Information Communication, etc.). Society OFS95-41) can be used.

The user terminal 21 includes a mail sending / receiving means 22 for sending / receiving mail, a rule setting means 23 for setting a mail transfer rule on the mail server 11, and an individual for setting personal information on the mail server 11. It comprises information setting means 24. These are all software used in ordinary e-mail systems (for example, WW
W system browser) can be used.

The point to be noted in the system shown in FIG. 1 is that, first, the mail server 11 includes both the mail transfer means 12 and the text analysis means 13.
As a result, the information extracted by using the text analysis unit 13 can be used by the mail transfer unit 12 to determine the necessity of mail transfer, the transfer destination, and the transfer medium.

FIG. 2 is a processing flowchart of the mail transfer means when receiving an electronic mail. Mail transfer means 12
When the mail server 11 receives an e-mail and the e-mail is stored in the mail spool 17, (S1, S1
2) The processes of S3 to S7 shown in FIG. 2 are executed for all rules set by the recipient.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram of the rule database 18. The rule database 18 stores the user terminal 2
1 to the mail server 11
It is set via the rule management means 14 above. For example,
Consider a case where the e-mail shown in FIG. 4 is received when the rule shown in FIG. 3 is set.

First, the mail transfer means 12 transfers the mail text to the text analysis means 13 and obtains the analysis result (S
3) If the schedule or ToDo information is extracted (S4), the result is registered in the personal information database 19 via the personal information managing means 15 (S5).

In the case of the e-mail shown in FIG. 4, the text analysis means 13 uses the schedule information as the schedule information, such as date and time "1/10/17, 17: 00-17: 00", title "7th regular meeting", and location "Head office". 3rd meeting room "was extracted and ToD
As the o information, the term “1997/10/3 17:00”, the title “Attendance report”, and other “Until the secretariat Y” are extracted.
The keywords are, for example, “7th regular meeting” “10/1
7 (Fri) 13: 00-17: 00, "Attendance" and "Today at 17:00" were extracted, and the summary was "The 7th regular meeting was held on October 17 (Fri) 13:00
At -17: 00, it was decided to hold the meeting in the third meeting room at the head office.
Please inform the secretariat Y of your attendance by 17:00 today. "
Is extracted.

The extracted schedule information, ToDo information, keywords, and summary are stored in the personal information database 19 in the form of a schedule object 50, a ToDo object 51, and a mail object 52 shown in FIG. Links between related data and extraction sources are provided between these objects.

As described above, the analysis result of the text analysis means 13 is automatically stored in the personal information database 19 with a link as shown in FIG. Mail server 1 via personal information setting means 24 and personal information management means 15
1 can reduce the work of updating the personal information database 19 on the user terminal 21;
There is an advantage that when confirming the schedule or the ToDo information from, the related data and the mail of the extraction source can be confirmed immediately.

Next, the mail transfer means 12 acquires the mail transfer rules set by the mail recipient from the rule database 18 via the rule management means 14, and stores the condition part of each rule, the header information of the received mail, and the text. By collating with the result information of the analysis means 13 (S6), a list of actions to be executed is created. In this case, by comparing the rule database of FIG. 3 with the object of FIG. 5,
The sender of this e-mail should be Y, the subject should include "meeting", and the ToD with the deadline
The action part of the rules R2 and R3 in FIG. 3 is registered as an action to be executed because the action part includes the o information.
The action part of this mail is executed according to the processing flowchart shown in FIG. 6 (S7).

The second point of note in this system is that the contents of the data to be transferred are determined by using the result extracted by the text analysis means 13. The processing of the mail transfer means 12 at the time of executing the action will be described with reference to FIG. The mail transfer unit 12 executes S11 to S15 in FIG. 6 for all transfer actions in the action list.

First, the specified transfer contents are obtained from the mail object (S11). Next, it is checked whether the transfer medium is an electronic mail (S12). If it is not an electronic mail, the transfer data is converted according to the transfer medium such as FAX, pager, telephone, etc. (S13), the transfer destination is specified and the transfer data is transmitted via the public line network 32 (S14). If the transfer medium is an e-mail, the e-mail is transmitted to the designated transfer destination (S1).
5).

Thereafter, it is determined whether the action list includes a reply mail sending action (S16). If the reply mail sending action is included, the reply message is edited using the mail sender, the current time, and the content of the executed action. Then, the message is transmitted to the mail sender (S17).

In the example described above, since the keyword is specified as the transfer content in the action part of the rule R2 in the rule database of FIG. 3, the “7th regular meeting, 10/10” registered in the mail object 52 of FIG. 17 (Fri) 1
3: 00-17: 00, attendance, until 17:00 today ”is determined as the transfer content.

FIG. 7A is a conceptual diagram of the transfer contents. Next, since the pager of the receiver A is specified as the transfer destination, the pager number of the receiver A is acquired from the address book stored in the personal information database 19 via the personal information management means 15. Further, the transfer contents are converted into pager output data and output to the designated pager via the public line network 32. Next, in order to execute the action of the rule R3, for example, the execution content of the action part of R2 is edited as a reply mail text, and the reply is sent to the mail sender Y.
FIG. 7B is a conceptual diagram of the reply mail at this time.

[0029]

As described above, the present invention has the following effects. (1) The schedule information, ToDo information, keywords, etc. described in the received e-mail text can be used to judge the necessity of mail transfer. Therefore, a more detailed and accurate judgment can be made than judgment using only header information. It can be carried out.

(2) The data to be transferred can be processed according to the information described in the text of the electronic mail and the transfer destination medium (FAX, pager, etc.). (3) Since the mail server is equipped with a personal information management means and a personal information database, the above information described in the body of the e-mail can be automatically registered in the personal information database, and the personal information database can be registered. By referencing, the transfer destination at the time of mail transfer can be determined.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a processing flowchart of a mail transfer unit when an electronic mail is received.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram of a rule database.

FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram of a received e-mail for explaining the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram of personal information stored in a personal information database using an output result of a text analysis unit.

FIG. 6 is a processing flowchart of a mail transfer unit when an action for transferring an electronic mail is executed.

FIG. 7 is a conceptual diagram of data transferred to a pager and an e-mail returned to an e-mail sender for describing the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 11 mail server 12 mail transfer means 13 text analysis means 14 rule management means 15 personal information management means 16 media conversion means 17 mail spool 18 rule database 19 personal information database 21A, 21B, 21C, 21D user terminal 22 mail transmission / reception means 23 rule setting Means 24 Personal information setting means 31 LAN 32 Public line network 41 FAX 42 Pager 43 Telephone

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────の Continuing from the front page (72) Inventor Hirotaka Ariyama Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation 3-19-2 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. An e-mail system comprising: a communication network for delivering an e-mail; a mail server connected to the communication network for performing a delivery / delivery process; and a plurality of user terminals for sending / receiving the e-mail. A personal information database holding personal information of each user, text analysis means for extracting schedule / ToDo information, keywords or summaries from electronic mail, and a schedule / ToDo extracted from received electronic mail using the text analysis means. An electronic mail system comprising personal information management means for registering information, keywords or summaries in the personal information database. 2. The electronic mail system according to claim 1, wherein said personal information managing means is configured to execute said schedule / T
When registering oDo information, keywords, or summaries in the personal information database, the T
An oDo object, a schedule object that stores schedule information, and a mail object that stores a keyword, a summary, or a mail text are separately registered and the registration information includes the ToDo object and the mail from which the schedule object is extracted. An electronic mail system, wherein a link indicating an object and a link indicating a relation between the ToDo object and the schedule object are added. 3. The electronic mail system according to claim 1, wherein said mail server comprises: a rule management means for designating a mail transfer according to the contents of the electronic mail; and a mail transfer rule set by each user. And a mail transfer means for transferring received e-mails with reference to the set rules.
Schedule extracted using the above text analysis means /
An electronic mail system characterized in that the necessity of mail transfer is determined using ToDo information, a keyword, or a summary. 4. The electronic mail system according to claim 1, wherein the mail server comprises:
It converts text data into facsimile data, pager display data or synthesized voice data, and uses a public telephone network to specify a destination facsimile machine,
Media conversion means for transmitting the converted data to a pager or telephone, and using the schedule / ToDo information, keywords or summary extracted by using the text analysis means at the time of the mail transfer, media and transfer contents of the mail transfer An e-mail system, characterized in that an e-mail system is determined. 5. An e-mail transfer method in an e-mail system having a communication network for distributing e-mail, a mail server connected to the communication network for performing transmission / distribution processing, and a plurality of user terminals for transmitting / receiving e-mail. In addition, the mail server performs schedule / ToDo by text analysis from the received e-mail.
Information, keywords or summaries are extracted, and the extracted schedule / ToDo information, keywords or summaries are
By registering in the personal information database that holds the personal information of each user, and using the schedule / ToDo information, keywords or summary extracted from the received e-mail, the e-mail is referred by referring to the mail transfer rules set in advance by each user. An electronic mail transfer method comprising: determining the necessity of transfer of an electronic mail and transferring the electronic mail according to a mail transfer rule. 6. A recording medium which is connected to a communication network and records an e-mail program for performing e-mail transmission / distribution processing, and extracts schedule / ToDo information, keywords or summaries from received e-mails by text analysis. Processing, registering the extracted schedule / ToDo information, keyword, or summary in a personal information database holding personal information of each user; and storing the schedule / ToDo information, keyword, or summary extracted from the received e-mail. A program that allows a computer to execute processing to determine whether mail transfer is necessary by referring to mail transfer rules set in advance by each user and to transfer electronic mail according to the mail transfer rules is stored. Electronic mail Recording medium on which a computer program is recorded.