Recipient changes in email threads

摘要

A tool for notifying a recipient of an email message, belonging to an email thread, that a recipient address has been added to or dropped from the thread. Address fields of the email message received are compared to the address fields of the most recent prior email message in the thread. Addressed that are determined to be added or dropped are stored in the metadata of the email message received so the added or dropped recipient addresses can be accessed to notify recipients of subsequent emails in the email thread. The metadata of previous email messages in the email thread are accessed to notify the recipient of recipient addresses added or dropped between any two consecutive email messages in the thread.

主权项

1. A method for notifying a recipient of an email message that one or more other designated recipients of the email message have been changed from designated recipients of one or more previous email messages related to the email message, the method comprising the steps of:
a computer system receiving an email message belonging to a chain of related email messages; the computer system comparing recipient addresses in the email message to recipient addresses of a most recent prior email message belonging to the chain of related email messages to determine one or more recipient addresses contained in either the email message but not the most recent prior email message or the most recent prior email message but not the email message; the computer system notifying a recipient of the email message of the one or more recipient addresses; the computer system storing the one or more recipient addresses in metadata of the email message; and the computer system accessing metadata of the most recent prior email message to notify the recipient of one or more recipient addresses in the metadata of the most recent prior email message, wherein the one or more recipient addresses in the metadata of the most recent prior email message are one or more recipient addresses contained in either the most recent prior email message but not an email message sequentially before the most recent prior email message or the email message sequentially before the most recent prior email message but not the most recent prior email message.