System and Method for Unified Email

Publishing Venue

The IP.com Prior Art Database

Abstract

Method for Unified E-Mail

System and Method for Unified Email

Core Contribution to Knowledge

People have many different email accounts; at least one for work, at least one for personal use, and etc. In the SAAS world individual's need to cope with a plurality of email system for work purposes, home/domestic purposes, academic purposes, etc etc. In current mail clients or interfaces there does not exist a solution to be able to manage the overwhelming number of emails and accounts. In current mail systems you can access other email accounts and partially be able to send an email from another account. This approach is limited because you can not actually send an email from a unified client without exposing your email address, lets say your work email address. Through this invention we propose a way to solve this. This invention has a couple distinct sub parts that make up the whole system. The parts are:

A handshaking protocol for mail clients/interfaces/servers to communicate

A method for determining which email service to send as an email as
A method for determining which storing history and preferences of incoming and outgoing email

Specifically, our invention is a system and method that can allow a user to use one email client to front all other email clients. We are not inventing the notion of mail aggregation for a plurality of email systems to a central point - as this can easily be achieved through mail forwarding and mail rules. Specifically, we are inventing a capability where a preferred email client can act as a front for all other email clients. This front will allow an individual to receive and response to all emails to/from all email clients but, significantly, will handshake with the relevant email client to facilitate the fidelity of mail exchange to ensure same is sent from the remote email client. For example - User 1 uses Hotmail, iNotes and Notes. Mails from users to User 1's Hotmail, iNotes, G-Mail and Notes accounts will all aggregate in Notes through rules and mail forwarding. Our invention is the response from User 1's notes client to his Gmail mail will appear as
a "Gmail" response to the respondee, albeit the response was facilitate in John's notes client. To allow this to happen our invention manages the appropriate handshakes between email servers to allow this to happen. From the perspective of the receiving user the returned notes look...