Collaborative email

Abstract

Methods, systems, and products are disclosed for writing collaborative email documents, including establishing a collaborative email document on an administrator's computer; identifying one or more collaborators who are authorized to view and edit the document; providing to the collaborators copies of the document for viewing and editing, wherein the collaborators' copies reside on collaborators' computers; creating revisions in at least one copy of the document; recording the revisions; and updating the copies of the document on collaborators' computers with the revisions. Embodiments typically include identifying editable portions of the email document, including specifying that only certain collaborators are authorized to view and edit one or more portions of the document. In many embodiments, revisions are streamed through a server so that there is no ‘master copy’ of a collaborative document, on a server or elsewhere, against which revisions are recognized.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, systems, and products for collaborative email. 2. Description Of Related Art Systems for collaboration in developing email documents generally maintain a master copy of a document in a central location, record changes in the master copy, and update collaborators' copies by providing a new copy of the entire document. This uses a lot of bandwidth, particularly when there are many revisions over a period of time. There are version control systems, such as Unix's Source Code Control System or ‘SCCS’ and the open-source version control system known as the Concurrent Versions System or ‘CVS.’ Such systems are strongly oriented to version control for source code documents, however, and do not integrate very well with collaborative email, lacking, as they do, support for such collaborative features as automated updates to certain revision levels or authen...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Methods, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for writing a collaborative email document, including establishing a collaborative email document on an administrator's computer; identifying one or more collaborators who are authorized to view and edit the document, wherein the collaborators optionally include the administrator; providing to the collaborators copies of the document for viewing and editing, wherein the collaborators' copies reside on collaborators' computers; creating revisions in at least one copy of the docume

Problems solved by technology

This uses a lot of bandwidth, particularly when there are many revisions over a period of time.

There are version control systems, such as Unix's Source Code Control System or ‘SCCS’ and the open-source version control system known as the Concurrent Versions System or ‘CVS.’ Such systems are strongly oriented to version control for source code documents, however, and do not integrate very well with collaborative email, lacking, as they do, support for such collaborative features as automated updates to certain revision levels or authentication through valid digital signatures.

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