Email Pre-Delivery System with Display and TTL Flags
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current email delivery systems are inefficient, particularly for large emails, as they require significant data-transfer time and computational resources, and are limited in scale and flexibility, failing to optimize delivery speed and storage management.
Innovation Solution
The system automatically pre-delivers emails that match specific criteria by hiding them until the user initiates the send or forward action, using a display flag, and sets a time-to-live (TTL) flag to manage storage and delivery, allowing near-instant delivery and minimizing storage impact.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If emails are pre-delivered to recipient inboxes, then delivery speed is improved and data-transfer time is eliminated, but inbox storage is consumed and spam filtering complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary email delivery by transferring emails to recipient inboxes in advance, before the user actually forwards them. This pre-delivery action eliminates data-transfer time when users forward emails, as the emails are already present in recipient inboxes. The system identifies emails likely to be forwarded based on patterns and delivers them proactively, improving delivery speed while managing storage through TTL flags.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the state parameter of emails by introducing display flags and TTL (time-to-live) flags. Emails are delivered with a display flag set to hidden, and a TTL value specifying how long they should be retained. This parameter change allows the system to pre-deliver emails without permanently consuming storage space, as emails with expired TTL values are automatically purged.
2Ease of operation
If pre-delivered emails are hidden using display flags, then user experience is improved by eliminating visible latency, but system complexity increases due to flag management
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a copy of the email with modified parameters (display flag and TTL flag) and places it in the recipient's inbox. The original email remains in the sender's inbox, while the copied version is pre-delivered to the recipient. This copying approach allows the system to improve user experience by making emails instantly available without visible latency, while the flag management complexity is confined to the copied email instances.
3Volume of stationary object
If TTL flags are implemented to purge emails, then storage management is optimized, but reliability decreases due to potential email loss
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements periodic cleanup actions based on TTL (time-to-live) values assigned to pre-delivered emails. Each pre-delivered email has an associated TTL that specifies how long it should be retained in the recipient's inbox. The system periodically checks and purges emails that have exceeded their TTL, optimizing storage space. This periodic action balances storage management with reliability, as emails are only purged after their designated retention period has elapsed.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a system and method for automatically pre-delivering messages such as emails that satisfy a certain criteria. Upon a received email satisfying certain criteria conforming to a pattern, an appropriate rule is triggered which pre-delivers an email(s) to other appropriate inboxes. The pre-delivered emails are marked with a display flag and a time-to-live (TTL) flag. The display flag masks the pre-delivered email. The display flag results in the pre-delivered email being hidden until the sending user actually executes the send/forward action. At that time, the display flag is toggled so that the pre-delivered email is instantly displayed in the recipient's inbox. The TTL flag set enables pre-delivered emails to have a life-span, such that in cases where the user chooses not to forward/send the email, they auto-destruct after a period of time.