The development of reports, presentations, and other documents often involves collaboration between multiple, remote individuals within an organization or group. However, even in corporate environments that have access to collaboration software or other file sharing technologies, individuals often use email to collaborate, utilizing file attachments to share documents with each other or to distribute versions of documents for review and editing.
For example, one person may send an initial email message containing an attached document to several individuals in the organization. Each of these individuals may in turn revise the documents, often renaming the document in such a way to reflect that modifications have been made. The modified document may then be returned to the sender in a reply message, or forwarded to others in the organization. The messages sent back and forth in response to the initial message together make up a conversation or message thread. The message thread may eventually include several file attachments representing different versions of the original document, referred to herein as the root file.
Users accessing their emails through traditional email applications may be provided with a mechanism to view all the messages associated with a message thread, either in date order or in a hierarchical display indicating the flow of messages among the individuals involved in the message thread. The display of messages associated with the message thread may also provide an indication of the messages that include a file attachment.
However, there is currently no easy way to aggregate together all of the different file attachments that have been attached or modified by the individuals involved in the conversation or message thread. An email user typically accesses each message in the message thread that has an attachment manually in order to identify the root files associated with the message thread. Further, users typically determine manually the most recent version of each root file by reviewing the varying names and last modified dates of each file attachment related to the root file.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds