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  Method of managing e-mail messagesUSPTO Application #: 20080104190Title: Method of managing e-mail messages Abstract: In a data processing system (100) supporting an electronic mail messaging system, a method of managing e-mail messages comprising, under the control of a mail user agent of a message sender user (QRS): keeping a list (455,450) of messages sent by the message sender user; enabling the sender user selecting (500,505,510) a wrong message (513) from the list of sent messages; causing a correcting message (520) to be sent to at least one of the message recipient users (ABC,DEF,JKL) of the selected message, the correcting message including message qualifier (X-replace-mail) qualifying the correcting message as a message intended to correct the selected message. Under the control of a mail user agent of said at least one of the message recipient users, the correcting message is received; using the message qualifier included therein, the selected message is identified among the received messages (715,720,730), and a correcting action on the selected message is performed. (end of abstract) Agent: Ibm Corp. (wip) C/o Walder Intellectual Property Law, P.C. - Richardson, TX, US Inventors: Gero Morreale, Sandro Piccinini, Claudio Morgia USPTO Applicaton #: 20080104190 - Class: 709206000 (USPTO) Related Patent Categories: Electrical Computers And Digital Processing Systems: Multicomputer Data Transferring, Computer Conferencing, Demand Based Messaging The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20080104190. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
TECHNICAL FIELD [0001] The present invention generally relates to the field of electronic data processing systems, and particularly to computer networks supporting electronic mail systems. BACKGROUND ART [0002] With the growth of computer networks, electronic mail (shortly referred to as e-mail) has become an extremely popular interpersonal communication media, for both private and professional purposes. In particular, thanks to the impressive diffusion of the Internet in the past few years, Internet e-mail nowadays provides a standard communication mechanism for millions of computer users. [0003] By means of any one of the several e-mail client softwares, such as IBM Lotusnotes, Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, and Eudora, just to cite some, composing and sending an e-mail message is a rather simple task, that involves specifying the e-mail address or addresses of one or more intended recipients of the message in one or more recipient address fields (the conventional "To", "Cc" and "Bcc" fields) of a message composition window, editing if desired a message subject field, editing a message body and, possibly, attaching one or more files to the message. In particular, compiling the recipient address fields is made easier by address book utilities, which allow creating user-defined address books wherein the user can save e-mail addresses for subsequent retrieval. These utilities also allows the user creating mailing lists or groups of recipients, including two or more e-mail addresses of recipients which are normally jointly included by the user in the list of recipients: when the user desires to send an e-mail message to the recipients of a given mailing list, he/she does not need to individually select each recipient from the address book, being sufficient to select the respective mailing list. [0004] It frequently happens that, after having composed and sent an e-mail message to one or more recipients, the message sender realizes that the message, as such, should not have been sent. For example, by reviewing a copy of the sent message stored in a repository of sent messages, the message sender may notice that the message body contained some errors or was incomplete, or that one or more of the intended attachments were missing, or that the message was sent to the wrong recipient or recipients. [0005] Situations like these cannot be remedied and are, at best, highly disappointing for both the message sender and the message recipients, not to say potentially dangerous. From one hand, the message sender has to inform the recipients of the erroneous message that the message they received contained errors, and possibly provide the correct information; this may be done by sending an additional e-mail message, by phone, or personally. From the other hand, the recipients of the erroneous message, if not informed properly and timely of the errors contained therein, waste time reading the incorrect message; they may even be lead astray by the erroneous information contained in the incorrect message, and, possibly, they may undertake undesired actions. [0006] It is observed that the problem of sending erroneous messages, albeit probably not exclusively inherent to e-mail systems, is however exacerbated by the quickness of the process of compiling and sending e-mail messages. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0007] In view of the state of the art outlined above, it has been an object of the present invention to improve the efficiency and reliability of e-mail systems. [0008] In particular, it has been an object of the present invention to remedy the problems inherent to the delivery to the recipients of e-mail messages that, after being sent, are recognized by the sender to be erroneous. [0009] This and other objects have been attained by means of a method as set forth in the appended claim 1. [0010] In brief, under the control of a Mail User Agent (MUA) of a message sender user, a list of messages sent by the sender user is kept. The sender user is enabled selecting a message from a list of sent messages, and a correcting message is caused to be sent to at least one of the message recipient users of the selected message. The correcting message includes a message qualifier qualifying the correcting message as a message intended to correct the selected message. For example, the correcting message may be a univocal message identifier, which is assigned by the mail user agent to each message that is sent. [0011] Under the control of an MUA of said at least one of the message recipient users, the correcting message is received and, using the message qualifier, the selected message is identified among the received messages, and a correcting action is performed on the identified selected message. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0012] The features and advantages of the present invention will be made apparent by the following detailed description of an embodiment thereof, provided merely by way of non-limitative example, which will be made in conjunction with the attached drawing sheets, wherein: [0013] FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a computer network supporting an e-mail system; [0014] FIG. 2 schematically shows, in terms of functional blocks, the main components of a generic computer of the network; [0015] FIG. 3 schematically shows, in terms of functional blocks, the main components of the e-mail system; [0016] FIG. 4 pictorially shows a partial content of a working memory of a generic computer of the network while executing an e-mail client software according to an embodiment of the present invention; [0017] FIG. 5 is a schematic flowchart illustrating a process of generation of a correction e-mail message directed to correct an erroneous message, in an embodiment of the present invention; [0018] FIG. 6 pictorially shows a menu page that is displayed to a user of the e-mail client software for guiding him/her in a process of composition of the correction message; and [0019] FIG. 7 is a schematic flowchart illustrating a process of automatic replacement of an erroneous message by means of the correction message, in an embodiment of the present invention. 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