Patent ID: 8122085

Claim:
A method for determining a time period in which to send an email to a plurality of email addresses, each of the email addresses being associated within a distribution list and the email being sent to at least one destination server associated with each of the email addresses, the method comprising: receiving, via a user interface from a user, a plurality of email addresses associated with the distribution list, each email address comprising an attribute, the attribute pertaining to a requested time period in which to send the email to each of the email addresses; for each email address, identifying the destination server based on said each email address and requesting performance metrics indicative of the capacity of the identified destination server to receive the or each of the emails; analysing each of the performance metrics to determine whether, the identified destination server is able to receive each of the emails within the requested time period; and in dependence of the identified destination server not being able to receive each of the emails, negotiating a time period in which the identified destination server can receive each of the emails, wherein, on receiving a plurality of email addresses associated with the distribution list via the user interface from the user, before sending an email or a request to each of the email addresses, each email address associated with the distribution list is matched against a list of email addresses stored in a directory service to ensure that each of the email addresses associated with the distribution list is a valid email address.