Centralized Contact Management via Sender Identification Token
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current email systems require manual extraction and updating of contact information from email signatures, which is inefficient and lacks centralized management, leading to inconsistencies and the need for users to manually manage contacts within their address books.
Innovation Solution
A centralized contact management system that embeds a sender identification token in electronic messages, allowing the receiving user to automatically retrieve and update the sender's contact information from a centralized database, ensuring accurate and synchronized contact lists across the communication system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual extraction of contact information from email signatures is used, then users can obtain contact information, but the process is inefficient and requires significant manual effort
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically extracting contact information from email signatures and storing it in a centralized database before the recipient needs it. When a user receives an email, the contact information is already available in the database, eliminating the need for manual extraction and significantly improving efficiency while reducing time loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service by automatically managing contact information extraction, storage, and distribution without requiring user intervention. The centralized database automatically populates contact details from incoming emails, and the system autonomously updates contact lists across the network, freeing users from manual contact management tasks.
2Reliability
If contact information is stored locally in individual address books, then users have access to their contacts, but inconsistencies arise when sender information changes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual distributed address books into a single centralized contact database. Instead of maintaining separate contact lists on each user's device, all contact information is consolidated in one central location. This ensures that when sender information changes, the update is automatically reflected for all users, eliminating inconsistencies while maintaining a simple system architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized contact database serves multiple functions: it stores contact information, automatically updates when changes occur, distributes updated contacts to all users, and provides a single source of truth for the entire system. This universal approach ensures reliability and accuracy of contact information across all users without requiring complex distributed synchronization mechanisms.
3Loss of information
If senders include contact information in email signatures, then recipients can access sender details, but the information may be outdated or inconsistent
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring email signatures for contact information changes. When a sender's contact details are updated in their signature, the system detects this change, extracts the updated information, and automatically updates the centralized database. This feedback loop ensures contact information remains current without requiring manual intervention from recipients to verify updates.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary extraction and validation of contact information from email signatures before distributing it to recipients. By proactively capturing and verifying contact details in advance, the system ensures that recipients always receive accurate, up-to-date information without needing to manually verify or update contacts themselves.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a method and system for managing contacts for a communication system by storing contact information in a centralized storage system and permitting receiving users to access the centralized contact information storage system using a token passed with communications from a sending user. The communications system may be a trusted network with trusted sending and receiving members. Each communications system member provides contact information the member may wish to make available to other parties. The member may also create a policy defining which contact information may be made available to different classes of users. A member of the communications system generates a message to send to a receiving user. A token that identifies the sending user to the communications system is embedded into the message to be sent to the receiving user. The receiving user, after identifying the message as a message containing a token, may request contact information for the sending user from the communications system using the token identifying the sending user to the communication system. The communication system delivers a subset of the sending user's contact information to the receiving user based on the sending user's contact information and policy definitions stored in the centralized contact information storage system of the communication systems. The system and method are especially adaptable to e-mail communications, but other forms of electronic communications may also be included in an embodiment, either solely or in combination.