Method and system to handle large volume of E-mail received...

Details Method and system to handle large volume of E-mail received... Method and system to handle large volume of E-mail received...

2000-09-21

2004-11-09

Jaroenchonwanit, Bunjob (Department: 2143)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput

Computer conferencing

Demand based messaging

C709S207000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06816885

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a method and system to handle large volume of e-mail received from a plurality of senders and generate suitable response intelligently.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
With an increase in e-mail usage there is a need to add powerful features to e-mail tools. E-mail usage is likely to increase at a phenomenal rate. This includes personal and official mail. With increasing mail volumes, users will feel the need to use more powerful e-mail tools. Some of the problems that are likely to be faced by users in the near future is:
1. Handling an enormous amount of mail.
2. Retain quality of mail response for all the mails. Typically it has been observed that
a. Mail response to mails read at the end of a day is poor in quality of content.
b. Mail response to mails after the first 50 odd mails decreases steadily in quality.
c. Human fatigue and urgency during office work also take their toll and sometimes users tend to be arbitrary in handling mail not giving the right attention at the right place.
This leads to a lot of problems in professional and personal scenarios.
The impact of this could be so far reaching especially in very influential and top positions (technical or management) that in a professional environment it could also lead to huge financial losses.
So far no serious study has been done on the impact of arbitrary treatment of electronic mail on the productivity, effectiveness and balance sheets of companies and the solution that would alleviate some of its effects. With a splurge in dot.com companies, and a present 160 million global users, e-mail usage is likely to assume gargauntan proportions and it is likely that in the future companies would appoint e-mail screeners to screen and prioritize mail. It is estimated that 500 million users would be hooked to the net by 2003. Add to this the growing intranet and extranet usage which is also likely to increase with e-business. Presently the members of senior management in large organizations who handle high volume e-mail already have their secretaries to help them handle mail.
In fact 90% of time spent by a manager in any industry is in communicating (including meetings, telephone calls, mail), in the coming years there is going to be major shift towards mail usage especially in non-IT industries where the emphasis of communication is going to shift strategically to electronic mail.
With burgeoning e-mail quantity, there is a need to have special focus on the content of e-mail. E-mail usage is likely to become monotonous, ubiquitous and last but not the least extremely time consuming due to large volume. Consequently a great deal of conscious effort needs to be put into maintaining the quality of e-mail content especially in a business scenario. Arbitrary e-mail usage in an e-business scenario could lead to catastrophic effects. On the other hand high quality e-mail content with richness and relevance is likely to have a very positive impact on an e-business.
E-mail being a human activity so far, is therefore riddled by human problems like fatigue, lack of concentration and lack of time. There is a dire need for e-mail tools, which can alleviate the problems described above.
Let us consider the existing scenario in a well connected company.
While receiving large no: of e-mails:
1. The number of e-mails could be sufficiently large that key individuals may not have the time to browse through the same and generate replies for each of them.
2. While replying to a plurality of senders the user seldom remembers the a is significant contents of the mails sent by these senders over a period of time while composing the reply. Whatever little the user recollects is limited by his/her memory of the said detail. The absence of this takes away the richness and relevance of contents. Sometimes irrelevant content inclusion by oversight or poor memory leads to further needless mail exchange apart from bandwidth expense and other image/goodwill/business damages. Precious time is anyway lost in the process.
Presently mail handling is done by:
a. Reading every single mail and replying to mails separately. This can become really cumbersome, tiring and time consuming especially if the number of related mails received is in the tune of hundreds or thousands. The quality of replies also decreases as the number of mails increases in quantity. A modest estimate of the amount of time spent by an individual on mails is discussed below.
b. As far as richness of content is concerned there is no systematic method used to lookup the relevant information from previous mails. This leads to understatements, misrepresentations, approximations, misunderstandings and sometimes leads to needless mail exchanges. In a business scenario this also leads to potential business loss.
An E-mail Usage Survey:
An e-mail usage survey was conducted on 20 members of a junior technical group on a normal business day in IBM Global Services India (P) Ltd. Following was the finding.
Assumptions:
1. Lotus notes, Netscape mail, Unix mail and all other kinds of mail were included.
2. One-liners are one-line messages per mail.
3. Small messages would contain 2-10 lines per mail.
4. Medium length messages would contain 10-100 lines per mail.
5. Long length messages would contain 100-500 lines per mail, including attachments.
Estimated Time spent in seconds
Choose &
point
to msg,
Time
Time
read
Open
Under-
Time
Spent
spent
subject &
the
Read
stand
Re-
spent
with
on
Type of
sender,
msg
the
the
read
Frame
Review
with
out
new
mail
prioritize
in
msg
msg
msg
reply
reply
reply
reply
msg
One
1
1
1
1
0
2
0
6/60
4/60
2/60
liner
mins
mins
mins
Short
1
1
10
5
5
10
5
37/60
22/60
15/60
message
mins
mins
mins
Medium
1
1
120
60
20
120
60
6
3 mins
3 mins
message
mins
22
22
secs
secs
Long
1
1
480
300
60
480
300
27
14
13
message
mins
mins 2
mins
2 secs
secs
Avg. no:
of mails
Avg no:
Avg no:
received
Avg. no:
of
of long
in a day
Avg. no:
of replies
Avg no:
Avg no:
medium
messages
(include
of new
to
of one
of short
length
received
official
messages
messages
liners
messages
messages
per day
and
sent in a
sent in a
received
received
received
(including
personal)
day
day.
per day
per day
per day
Attachments)
Mails
14
5
5
2
6
4
1
As can be seen from the above only 5 of 14 mails were needed to be replied to, which is 36% of all mails received.
Approximately 36% of total mails received were sent anew.
Approximately 64% of all mails received were read but not replied to. Assuming the % distribution shown above we get:
Mail type
Time taken
One liners
0.36 * 6/60 + 0.36 * 4/60 + 0.64 * 2/60 =
4.88/60 minutes
Short messages
0.36 * 37/60 + 0.36 * 22/60 + 0.64 * 15/60 =
30.84/60 minutes
Medium
0.36 * (6 + 22/60) + 0.36 * (3 + 22/60) + 0.64 * 3 =
messages
5.42 minutes
Long messages
0.36 * (27 + 2/60) + 0.36 * (14 + 2/60) + 0.64 * 13 =
23 minutes
Total
28 minutes 35 seconds → 28 minutes (approx.)
This a very modest estimate.
Managers spend 90% of their time communicating (e-mail, telephone and meetings) and therefore the time spent by them on e-mail is much more than what is seen above. Senior management spends much more time in handling mail.
Extrapolating the above figure of 28 minutes for every 14 mails we get the following data.
No: of mails
received in a
Total time spent (including reading and replying
business day
to selected mails)
 10
20 minutes
 50
1 hour 40 minutes
100
3 hours 20 minutes
500
16 hours 40 minutes
1000 
33 hours 20 minutes
Some recent attempts at solving these problems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,948,058 and Japanese patent laid-open publication (Kokai) nos. Heisei 6-162085, Heisei 2-170642 and Heisei 4-351134. However, all these patents are limited in the scope of their solutions, as none of these utilize the power of available technology in the form of expert systems. Furthermore, none of these patents addresses the issue of generating replies to the received emails automatically.
The object of this invention is to provide a method an

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