Zone classification of electronic mail messages
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsKrishna Kumar Parthasarathy, Anatoliy Panasyuk
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Embodiments of the invention relate to techniques for classifying received e-mails and e-mails to be sent. In some embodiments, a set of e-mail zones may be defined and e-mails may be classified into one of the plurality of zones. An indication of the zone into which an e-mail has been classified may be displayed in a visual display of the e-mail.
Claims20
A method performed by an electronic mail (e-mail) client application program executing on a computer having at least one tangible memory that stores processor-executable instructions for the client application program and at last one processor that executes the processor-executable instructions, the method comprising:
- receiving an e-mail message from an e-mail server that identifies an e-mail address associated with the client application program as an intended recipient, the e-mail message including classification information identifying one of a plurality of pre-defined e-mail zones into which the e-mail message has been classified;
- accessing the classification information from the e-mail message;
- determining, from the classification information, the one of the plurality of pre-defined e-mail zones in which the e-mail message has been classified;
- accessing policy information stored in the at least one tangible memory to determine whether any policy action is to be performed in connection with the e-mail message;
- when it is determined that a policy action is to be performed in connection with the e-mail message, performing the policy action;
- and
- visually displaying the e-mail message, wherein the visual display of the e-mail message includes at least one indication of the one of the plurality of pre-defined e-mail zones into which the e-mail message has been classified.
At least one computer-readable medium encoded with processor-executable instructions for an e-mail server application program that, when executed on a computer having at least one tangible memory and at least one processor perform a method comprising:
- receiving an e-mail message;
- accessing a set of classification rules;
- based on the set of classification rules, classifying the e-mail message into one of a plurality of predefined e-mail zones;
- adding to the e-mail message information identifying the one of the plurality of pre-defined e-mail zones;
- and
- transferring the e-mail message to an e-mail client associated with an intended recipient of the e-mail message.
A computer having at least one tangible memory that stores processor-executable instructions for an e-mail client application program and at least one processor that executes the processor-executable instructions to:
- receive user input specifying at least one recipient e-mail address for an e-mail message to be sent;
- send the at least one recipient e-mail address to at least one e-mail server;
- and
- in response to sending the at least one recipient e-mail address, receive at least one zone classification indicating one of a plurality of pre-defined zones into which the e-mail message is classified.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.