Aiding the Workflow of Email Conversations by Enhancing Email with Semantics

Abstract

Despite persisting in popularity, email is still plagued with information overload, hindering the workflow of data handled by the user. Just as Semantic Web technologies promise to revolutionize the Web, we aspire to use the same technology to enhance electronic mail with useful semantics. Thus we will tackle one of the largest flaws of the email communication genre - the lack of shared expectations about the form and content of the interaction, which can be attributed to the lack of explicit semantics covering context and content of exchanged messages. Earlier research showed that email content can be captured by applying speech act theory. We will refine and extend this work to develop an email speech act ontology and outline a non-deterministic model that predicts the user¿s best course of action upon sending or receiving an email.