Banyan Systems, Inc.

Switchboard Incorporated

Beyond, Inc.

Beyond Corporated

Eugene H Lee

Charles J Digate

Kevin C Gross

Michael Adler

David A Wright

Lisa A Dalton

Jeffrey A Schutzman

A directory service allows a user to receive email messages from senders without requiring the user to reveal his/her email address. The directory service maintains users' email addresses but allows users to restrict the display of their email addresses. The directory service can cause a message to be sent from a sender to a recipient without revealing the recipient's email address.

Directory with options for access to and display of email addresses

A flexible, event driven and conditional rule based mail messaging system which can be transparently implemented for use in electronic mail applications. A rule mechanism is implemented having a 'When-If-Then' event-driven, conditional, action-invoking paradigm or 'triplet' which permits definition of a repertoire of events considered to be significant events upon which to trigger actions in the electronic mail messaging system. Each particular event may be associated with a specific mail message and/or rules to promote efficient mapping of messages, events and rules so that only rules associated with a specific event are invoked upon occurrence of the event. Only relevant rules, i.e. those associated with a satisfied event, need be further processed. A graphical user interface to a structured rule editor facilitates synthesis of rules by a user via a substantially transparent rule engine.

Event-driven rule-based messaging system

A rule based electronic messaging system with a facility for automatically running a user's rules under system control without need for user intervention or attendance, having a feedback mechanism which reports status relating to users automatically processed. System status reporting or feedback can be used for workflow administration or routing. A controller utility accesses a user-list-file with the user name of every 'user' whose messages are to be automatically, periodically processed. Upon accessing the user-list-file, a user name is selected and that user's copy of the mail messaging facility is started. The controller runs that user's rules against that user's messages and effects processing of the messages accordingly. Status information is reported and rules can be invoked as a function of the status reporting. A dedicated rule server can be implemented wherein the feedback information is used for work flow administration.

Automatic electronic messaging system with feedback and work flow

A flexible, event driven and conditional rule based mail messaging system which can be transparently implemented for use in electronic mail applications. A rule mechanism is implemented having a 'When-If-Then' event-driven, conditional, action-invoking paradigm or 'triplet' which permits definition of a repertoire of events considered to be significant events upon which to trigger actions in the electronic mail messaging system. Each particular event may be associated with a specific mail message and/or rules to promote efficient mapping of messages, events and rules so that only rules associated with a specific event are invoked upon occurrence of the event. Only relevant rules, i.e. those associated with a satisfied event, need be further processed. A graphical user interface to a structured rule editor facilitates synthesis of rules by a user via a substantially transparent rule engine. A modular architecture for the structured rule editors effects an extensible and portable facility invoking selected rule scripting language to implement various functions in the context of various electronic mail messaging environments.

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Eugene H Lee