An Intelligent Agent for Prioritizing E-Mail Messages

The proliferation of telecommunication networks, like Internet and Bitnet, has promoted electronic mail (e-mail) into a viable business communication tool with widespread use that traverses all levels of management. In some organizations, e-mail users are being overwhelmed with a barrage of useless messages or “electronic junk” mail. This interferes with a user’s information processing capability and causes a negative effect on usefulness of this communication tool. This paper addresses the issue of time management by reducing information overload in email. A knowledge-based agent, called AIMS, was developed to prioritize e-mail messages. AIMS is different from other systems in three ways: 1) it does not burden users with the task of creating or maintaining message prioritizing rules, 2) it uses a user’s personal knowledge (or preferences) with organizational considerations for prioritizing messages, and 3) it was evaluated at an academic institution with a group of 46 e-mail users who found the prioritized list generated by AIMS highly accurate.