Email Chain Navigation via Social and Topic Maps
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Solution Overview
Problem
Navigating long email chains for pertinent information is difficult due to duplication of history, lack of social context, and temporal ordering limitations, as well as the challenge of accessing and managing email attachments across exchanges.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses social network and text analysis to generate topic and author maps, allowing for arbitrary ordering of email messages and access to email attachments based on relevance and permissions, facilitating contextual searching and navigation across email chains.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If email chains include duplication of history in each message, then complete exchange context is preserved, but navigation difficulty and information retrieval complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the email chain into distinct components: a chronological message list showing individual exchanges, and a separate navigation map displaying hierarchical groupings by topic and participant. This segmentation allows users to view the complete exchange context in the message list while simultaneously accessing an organized overview in the navigation map, eliminating the need to navigate through duplicated historical content in each message.
2Loss of information
If email messages are ordered temporally, then chronological accuracy is maintained, but social context and topic relevance are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent adds a new organizational dimension to email display by creating a navigation map that groups messages hierarchically by topic and participant relationships, rather than solely by time. This second dimension allows users to explore email chains by social context and topic relevance while the original temporal ordering is preserved in the background, enabling both chronological accuracy and social context to coexist.
3Loss of information
If users can access all email attachments in a chain, then complete information availability is achieved, but permission management and security complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary permission management system that automatically determines access rights to email attachments based on the user's role in the social map and the sensitivity of the attachment content. This intermediary layer mediates between the user's information needs and the security requirements, automatically granting or denying access without requiring complex manual permission configurations, thus achieving complete information availability where appropriate while maintaining security.
Data Source
AI summary
Technical solutions are described to arbitrarily order and access email messages based on text analysis and social network analysis. One general aspect includes a system that includes an email server and an email client. The email server generates a topic map of email messages stored on the email server. The email server also generates a social map of users with accounts on the email server. The email server receives an email message from a first user, the email message directed to a second user. The email server sends the email message to a third user in response to determining that the email message is relevant to the third user. The present document further describes examples of other aspects such as methods, computer products.