WO2008116419A1

WO2008116419A1 - An email tracking system and a method and server thereof

Info

Publication number: WO2008116419A1
Application number: PCT/CN2008/070586
Authority: WO
Inventors: Tianshi Mu
Original assignee: Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Company Limited
Priority date: 2007-03-26
Filing date: 2008-03-26
Publication date: 2008-10-02
Also published as: CN100546288C; CN101079841A

Abstract

An email tracking system comprises: an email sender, for sending an email with a tracking identifier, wherein the tracking identifier includes the sender information and an email identification code; an email server, for delivering the email and parsing the tracking identifier of the email, identifying the email on the basis of the email identification code obtained by parsing, identifying the index table corresponding to the sender information on the basis of the sender information obtained by parsing and updating the index table corresponding to the sender information with the latest delivery status of the identified email. With the technical solution of the present invention, it is possible for the sender to track the delivery status of user emails effectively, and it is possible to show the delivery status to the sender in time.

Description

E-mail tracking system, method and server thereof

Technical field

The present invention relates to electronic mail technology, and more particularly to an email tracking system and method and server therefor. Background of the invention

Current e-mail software, such as Foxmail and Outlook, mainly uses an optional "receipt, service to confirm the receipt of the mail, the recipient can voluntarily choose to inform the sender. There is also a Msgtag service. The sender is automatically notified when the message is opened.

In the webmail (webmail), after the sender sends the email, if the recipient does not automatically return the receipt after receiving the email in the webmail mailbox, the sender generally cannot know whether the email arrives at the other party's email address. , and I don't know the delivery status of the email. Especially for some highly important emails, the sender wants to be able to clearly know the delivery status of the email at a certain point in time, for example: whether the email has arrived at the other mailbox or was rejected, or was delayed.

It can be seen that the implementation of the above tracking function depends on the settings of the recipient in the webmail mailbox and the email software. If the recipient does not set the return function in the webmail and email software, the sender cannot know the delivery status of the email, thus causing 4 inconvenience to the sender. Summary of the invention

The embodiment of the invention provides an email tracking system, a method and a server thereof, and can effectively track the delivery status of the user's email when the recipient does not set the receipt function in the webpage mailbox, and timely deliver the email. The status is displayed to the user. The technical solution of the embodiment of the present invention includes:

An email tracking system, comprising: a mail sender and a mail server: wherein: the mail sender is configured to send an email with a tracking identifier, the tracking identifier comprising a sender information and a mail identification number;

The mail server is configured to deliver the email and parse the tracking identifier of the email, determine an email according to the parsed email identification number, and determine, according to the parsed sender information, the information corresponding to the sender information. Indexing the table, and updating the determined latest delivery status of the email to the index table corresponding to the sender information.

The embodiment of the present invention also discloses an email tracking method, including: sending an email with a tracking identifier, where the tracking identifier includes a sender information and a mail identification number;

Delulating the email and parsing the tracking identifier of the email, determining an email according to the parsed email identification number, determining an index table corresponding to the sender information according to the parsed sender information, and determining The latest delivery status of the email is updated to the index table corresponding to the sender information.

An email server includes an email receiving module and an index table saving module, and each sender corresponds to an index table, where:

An email receiving module, configured to receive an email containing an email tracking identifier, and send the email, the tracking identifier includes a sender information and a mail identification number, and parse the tracking identifier of the email, according to the parsing The outgoing mail identification number determines an email, determines an index table corresponding to the sender information based on the parsed sender information, and updates the determined latest email status of the determined email to the sender corresponding to the sender Information in the index table;

An index table saving module, configured to save an index table corresponding to the sender, and display the latest delivery status of the email corresponding to the email identification number stored in the index table to the sending People.

By adopting the technical solution of the embodiment of the present invention, the sender can effectively track the delivery status of the user's email, and display the delivery status to the sender in time. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

1 is a schematic structural diagram of an e-mail tracking system according to an embodiment of the present invention; and FIG. 2 is a flowchart of an e-mail tracking method according to an embodiment of the present invention. Mode for carrying out the invention

The invention will now be further elucidated with reference to the drawings and specific embodiments.

In an embodiment of the invention, an email tracking system is proposed. The system includes a mail sender and a mail server. Wherein: a mail sender, configured to send an email with a tracking identifier, the tracking identifier including sender information and a mail identification number; a mail server, a tracking identifier for delivering the email and parsing the email Determining an email according to the parsed mail identification number, determining an index table corresponding to the sender information according to the parsed sender information, and updating the determined latest email status of the determined email to the corresponding In the index table of the sender information.

The mail server may process the timeout email according to a preset timeout period when a mail delivery delay and/or a failure occurs during the delivery process, and record the email timeout prompt information in the index table or Send the prompt message of the mail timeout directly to the sender of the mail. The mail server can also filter the fake email tracking identifier or filter emails that do not need to track their delivery status before delivering the email.

For example, an exemplary structure of an email tracking system proposed by an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

As shown in FIG. 1, in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, an email tracking system main package The webpage user outbox 1, the email provided with the email tracking module on the webpage user outbox 1, the index table 3 set on the background server 7, and the email tracking identifier set in the background server 7. The filtering module 5 and the email receiving module 6.

The email tracking module includes a mail identification number generating unit for generating a unique mail identification number according to a preset algorithm, and simultaneously saving in the webpage user outbox 1. When the sender needs to send a message through the webpage user outbox 1, an email tracking module can be recorded in the header of the email 2, and the tracking identifier can be represented as X-TraceMail-Tag, and the format of the tag can be expressed as : <Sender> _ <mail identification number>, and simultaneously record the e-mail sending time, and update the information that the mail has been successfully sent to the sender's index table 3.

The index table 3 is stored on the background server 7, and each mail account user can correspond to an index table 3. The index table 3 is used to record the latest delivery status of the email to be displayed to the sender. When the sender clicks on the sent email in the sent mailbox, you can see the delivery status of the email.

The email receiving module 6 is set on the background server 7. All e-mails 2 sent by the web user's outbox 1 are sent to the back-end server 7 of the mail service provider, and these messages are finally delivered by the back-end server 7 through the internal forwarding delivery process. The e-mail receiving module 6 is configured to receive the e-mail in a unified manner, parse the tracking identifier of the e-mail, and perform classified delivery on the received e-mail, and the tracking identifier uniquely determines each e-mail to be tracked, according to the e-mail. The tracking identifier recorded by the tracking module updates the latest delivery status of the email after the classified delivery to the sender's index table 3.

As an improvement of the embodiment of the present invention, in an embodiment of the present invention, an email tracking system further includes a mail timeout processing module 4. When the mail is in a non-terminating state during the delivery process, for example: A large number of letters are sent at the same time, resulting in a large number of mail queues, so that the background delivery mail server queue is too long, and then the delay queue or the return queue processing is performed. Possible cases of bounces include incorrect recipient addresses, and so on. If the letter is continuously delayed, if the delay time exceeds the preset timeout timeout, the message timeout processing module 4 may return the message of the mail timeout (such as "mail delay" or "mail delivery failure", etc.) to the sender. .

The preset timeout timeout can be defined as follows: the sending time recorded by the sender when sending a message is T1, and when the sender clicks on the sent mail in the webpage user outbox 1, the user data index table is queried. The letter has not reached the termination state, and the page records the time T2 when the message is opened again. If T2-Tl>timeout, then the message is considered to have been timed out, and the page should return a message to the sender's message timeout.

As another improvement of the embodiment of the present invention, in an embodiment of the present invention, an email tracking system further includes an email tracking identifier filtering module 5 for filtering a pseudo email tracking identifier or filtering without tracking its delivery status. The email, the filtered email, arrives at the email receiving module 6. In general, other pseudo e-mail tracking identifiers need to be filtered to avoid illusion to the user; for the e-mail client (eg, Outlook, foxmail, etc.), tracking may not be required, that is, the embodiment of the present invention The tracking refers to the case of sending a message by logging in to webmail, and the mail client sends out the tracking range.

The email tracking system of the embodiment of the present invention can share the background server 7 with other webmail mailboxes. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the functions of the email receiving module 6 in the embodiment of the present invention can be implemented in the background server 7.

An embodiment of the present invention also provides an email server. The email server includes an email receiving module and an index table saving module, and each sender corresponds to an index table, where:

An email receiving module, configured to receive an email containing an email tracking identifier and deliver the email, the tracking identifier including a sender information and a mail identification number, And parsing the tracking identifier of the email, determining an email according to the parsed email identification number, determining an index table corresponding to the sender information according to the parsed sender information, and updating the determined email The delivery status is updated to the index table corresponding to the sender information;

The index table saving module is configured to save the index table corresponding to the sender, and display the latest delivery status of the email corresponding to the mail identification number stored in the index table to the sender.

The index table saving module may actively send the mail sender to the latest delivery status of the email corresponding to the mail identification number stored in the index table, or the latest delivery status of the email in response to the mail identification number.

In addition, the email server may further include a mail timeout processing module. The mail timeout processing module is configured to process a timeout email according to a preset timeout period when a mail delivery delay and/or a failure occurs during the delivery process, and record the email timeout prompt information to the index. The prompt information of the mail timeout is directly sent to the mail sender in the table.

Not only this, the email server preferably further includes an email tracking identity filtering module. An email tracking identity filtering module that filters fake email tracking identifiers or filters emails that do not need to be tracked for their delivery status.

As shown in FIG. 2, in an embodiment of the present invention, an email tracking method mainly includes the following steps:

Steps S1, S2, the sender sends an email with a tracking identifier. When the user sends a message via webmail, the message tracking identifier X-TraceMail-Tag is entered at the head of the mail. The format of the tag is: <sender>_<mail identification number>, and the time of sending the mail is recorded at the same time, and Update the message that the message has been successfully sent to the sender's index table. For example, the user 12345@qq.com sends an email A to the user of the 67890@qq.com in the webpage mailbox, and saves the <send time> and the <successful status of the transmission> in the user's index table of the user 12345@qq.com ( In the structure, a field X-TraceMail-Tag is also recorded in the header of the email: 12345_XX...X (The email identification number can be generated by a preset algorithm to generate a globally unique N-digit string, N can be 31) The email is now saved in the Sent Mailbox. When the 12345@qq.com user opens the sent message, the system will display the message "Successfully sent" to the user.

Step S3: The email tracking identifier filtering module 5 filters the received email. In general, other pseudo-email tracking identifiers need to be filtered to avoid illusions to users; for tracking via email clients (eg, Outlook, foxmail, etc.), there is no need to track, because even if the delivery is unsuccessful, the client There will also be a bounce.

Step S4: When the filtered email arrives at the email receiving module 6, the email receiving module 6 performs classified delivery. When classifying, it is generally necessary to sort out which messages are sent to the inner domain (for example: @qq.com is delivered to @qq.com), and which are sent to the foreign domain (for example: @qq.com is delivered to @163.com) mail. Before the delivery, the email needs to be parsed, for example, the above email is parsed to obtain X-TraceMail-Tag: 12345_XX...X.

In step S5, it is determined whether the delivery is successful. The normal delivery process will be faster. An ordinary 200K email can be delivered to the other mailbox only by 0.3S. If the delivery is successful, step S7 is performed; however, if a non-terminating state occurs during the delivery process, for example: mail queue There are a lot of letters, and a large number of letters are sent out, so that the background delivery mail server queue is too long, and step S6 is performed.

In step S6, the time-out email is processed accordingly. If the mail is continuously delayed, if the delay time exceeds the preset timeout timeout, the mail timeout processing module 4 may update the prompt information of the mail timeout (such as "mail delay" or "mail delivery failure", etc.) Go to the index table and return it to the sender via the index table. Optionally, the mail timeout processing module 4 may directly return the prompt information of the mail timeout to the sender. The preset timeout timeout can be defined as follows: When the sender sends a message, the sending time is T1. When the sender clicks on the sent email in the webpage mailbox, the page records the time T2 when the email is first opened. If T2-Tl>timeout, then the message is considered to have been timed out, and the page should return a message to the sender's email timeout.

Step S7, by extracting the tracking identifier of the email, the email identifier ID in the X-TraceMail-Tag can uniquely identify the tracked email, and then update the latest delivery status of the successful delivery of the email in step S5. The sender described by the X-TraceMail-Tag is in the index table of the background server. In general, the delivery termination status that may occur after an email has been delivered:

The status of the delivery of this domain is:

a, SENT_OK: indicates successful delivery to the user inbox of the domain;

b, NO_SPACE: indicates that the recipient space is insufficient;

c, NO_USER: indicates that the recipient address does not exist;

d, FILTERJGNORE: indicates that the recipient is filtered by the filter settings; e, ANTISPAMJGNORE: indicates that the recipient is filtered by the garbage setting; f, SYS_ERR: indicates a system error;

g: BOUNCE: Indicates system bounce.

The status of the outbound delivery is (because it is impossible to know how the background delivery of the foreign domain service provider is carried out, so there are two termination states;):

a, SENT_OK_OUT: indicates delivery to the foreign domain user inbox;

b, BOUNCE_OUT: indicates that the delivery of the foreign domain user is a bounce.

If the above recipient 67890@qq.com sets a filter to prohibit receiving a letter from 12345@qq.com, then the domain delivery arrival termination status is FILTER_IGNORE „ According to the X-TraceMail-Tag: 12345_XX...X field information, two fields <sender>-<mail identification number> and <send time recorded in the sender's 12345@qq.com index table 〉 The three uniquely determined that the email was sent to the user of 67890@qq.com, and re-written the email delivery status FILTER_IGNORE into the 12345@qq.com user index table.

Step S8: Receive a sender's query request, and display the delivery status information of the email in the index table to the sender. That is to say, when the user of 12345@qq.com clicks on the sent email A, the information recorded in the index table of 12345@qq.com is obtained, and the delivery termination state is displayed to the user.

In summary, by adopting the technical solution of the embodiment of the present invention, the sender can query the entire delivery state of the email from sending to delivery, thereby implementing a complete mail tracking process.

The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the present invention, and various modifications and changes can be made to the present invention. All modifications, equivalents, improvements, etc., made within the spirit and scope of the invention are intended to be included within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

Claim

An email tracking system, comprising: a mail sender and a mail server, wherein:

The mail sender is configured to send an email with a tracking identifier, where the tracking identifier includes a sender information and a mail identification number;

2. The email tracking system according to claim 1, wherein an latest delivery status of the email of the mail identification number, or

The mail server is configured to send a message to the mail in response to the request of the mail sender.

The e-mail tracking system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the mail server is configured to time out according to a preset timeout period when a mail delivery delay and/or a failure occurs during the delivery process. The e-mail is processed, and the prompt information of the mail timeout is recorded in the index table or the prompt information of the mail timeout is directly sent to the mail sender.

The email tracking system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the mail server is configured to filter the fake email tracking identifier or filter the email without tracking its delivery status.

5. An email server, characterized in that the email server comprises an electronic a mail receiving module and an index table saving module, each sender corresponding to an index table, wherein: an email receiving module, configured to receive an email containing an email tracking identifier and deliver the email, the tracking identifier includes a sender information and a mail identification number, and parsing the tracking identifier of the email, determining an email according to the parsed email identification number, and determining an index table corresponding to the sender information according to the parsed sender information, And updating the latest delivery status of the determined email to the index table corresponding to the sender information;

The e-mail server according to claim 5, wherein the indexing number is an latest delivery status of the e-mail, or

The index table saving module is configured to send a status to the mail in response to the request of the mail sender.

The email server according to claim 5 or 6, wherein the email server further comprises a mail timeout processing module;

The mail timeout processing module is configured to process a timeout email according to a preset timeout period when a mail delivery delay and/or a failure occurs during the delivery process, and record the email timeout prompt information to the index. The prompt information of the mail timeout is directly sent to the mail sender in the table.

The email server according to claim 5 or 6, wherein the email server further comprises an email tracking identifier filtering module;

The email tracking identifier filtering module, configured to filter a fake email tracking identifier or Filter emails that don't need to track their delivery status.

9. An email tracking method, comprising:

Sending an email with a tracking identifier, the tracking identifier including sender information and a mail identification number;

10. The method of tracking emails according to claim 9, wherein the method further comprises:

the Lord

The latest delivery status of the sub-mail; or

The latest delivery status of the email stored in the index table corresponding to the mail identification number is transmitted to the mail sender in response to the request of the mail sender.

The method of tracking an email according to claim 9 or 10, wherein the method further comprises:

The information that the email is successfully transmitted is updated to an index table corresponding to the sender information.

The method for tracking an email according to claim 9 or 10, wherein the method further comprises: processing the time-out email by time, and recording the prompt information of the email timeout to the index table or directly Send a message indicating the timeout of the mail to the sender of the mail.

The email tracking method according to claim 9 or 10, wherein before the email is delivered, the method further comprises: Filter fake email tracking IDs or filter emails that don’t need to track their delivery status