Patent ID: 7546352

Claim:
A method of automatically merging e-mail replies to a sender, comprising: creating an original e-mail message including a software code for review; embedding encoded portions of context information into the original e-mail message; transmitting the original e-mail message with the software code for review to a predetermined group of software reviewers; associating individual reviewer comments to the embedded encoded portions of context information; incorporating the individual reviewer comments directed to code lines of the software code into individual reply messages; identifying reply messages to merge into a single consolidated merged reply message; stripping out user-defined indentations from the software code in individual reply messages added by the reviewers; scanning the reply messages for the presence of encoded context information; using the encoded context information if present to identify a specific code line of software code in the original e-mail message a reviewer comment is associated with; applying a pattern matching technique to the reviewer comments and code lines of individual reply messages to associate one of the reviewer comments to a specific code line of software code in the original e-mail message; attaching an indication of reviewer information along with the associated reviewer comments; merging the associated reviewer comments into the single consolidated merged reply message; grouping reviewer comments and indications of reviewer information common to a specific code line together; grouping reviewer comments and indications of reviewer information common to a specific encoded portion of context information together; placing the reviewer comments at the top or bottom of the merged reply message when pattern matching techniques fail to associate the reviewer comments with a specific code line; collapsing sections of software code from view in the merged reply message that do not contain reviewer comments; and transmitting the merged reply message back to the sender.