Communication Item Opening Status Tracking and Alerting

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing communication systems fail to effectively alert recipients about unopened items, such as attachments and external resources, in communications like emails and meeting invites, leading to missed reviews or actions.

Innovation Solution

A method and system that tracks the opening status of items in communications and alerts the sender or recipient via a trigger, such as a meeting reminder or search, to ensure unopened items are addressed, using a communication device's memory and applications to manage and update item statuses.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Quantity of substance

If communication systems send attachments and external resources to recipients, then the completeness and richness of communication content is improved, but the reliability of ensuring recipients review and act on these items deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecommunication content completenessVSAvoiditem review reliability

Core Design Contradiction:

Quantity of substanceVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements feedback by tracking the opening status of attachments and external resources, then providing notifications to senders when items remain unopened. This closed-loop feedback mechanism allows senders to know whether recipients have reviewed their communications and take follow-up action if needed, thereby improving reliability without reducing content completeness

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Solution Approach 2:

The system performs preliminary tracking of item opening status immediately when communications are sent, proactively monitoring whether attachments and external resources are opened before follow-up actions are needed. This preliminary action enables timely notifications rather than waiting for missed deadlines

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

2Loss of information

If the system tracks opening status of all items in communications, then the completeness of tracking information is improved, but the device complexity and processing overhead increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvetracking information completenessVSAvoidsystem complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system segments tracking by allowing selective monitoring of specific attachments and external resources within communications. Users can choose which items to track individually rather than automatically tracking everything, dividing the tracking task into manageable segments that reduce overall system complexity while maintaining necessary information completeness

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements partial tracking by monitoring only the opening status of specific items rather than all communication metadata. This selective partial action focuses computational resources on the most critical tracking information (whether items were opened) without the excessive complexity of tracking all possible communication attributes

Inventive Principle:

Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentEP2634979B1Method and system for alerting unopened items in communications

Publication Date: 2014.06.18 BLACKBERRY LTD

Figure 3A~4C
Figure 5A~5B
Figure 6A~6B

AI summary

The present matter relates to a method and system for alerting unopened items in communications, particularly attachments (204A) and external resources referenced (204B) (e.g. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URis), etc.), in communications such as email or meeting invite messages. The alerting may be triggered by a meeting reminder, telephone communication, search or other event. Alerting may be to senders, recipients or both.