Patent ID: 8898308

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for configuring an electronic mail message application to communicate with a server storing electronic mail messages at least one of to and from an electronic mail message account of a user, the computer-implemented method being executed when computer-readable instructions, stored on at least one memory, are executed by at least one processing unit of a computing system, the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving an electronic mail message address and a password from the electronic mail message application; attempting to retrieve server connection settings from a designated server while asynchronously deriving the server connection settings based on the electronic mail message address, wherein the server connection settings are unknown to the electronic mail message application and are necessary for establishing a connection between the electronic mail message application and the server, and wherein deriving server connection settings further comprises: determining a domain portion of the electronic mail message address, wherein the domain portion includes a domain name and a top level domain; prepending one or more known server prefix names to a front end of the domain portion of the electronic mail message address to yield a server domain combination; calculating one or more permutations of the server domain combination; evaluating the one or more permutations of the server domain combination to determine the server connection settings, the evaluating comprising: attempting to establish a connection using the one or more permutations of the server domain combination and the password; and detecting a connection to the server when at least one permutation of the server domain combination is successfully used with the password; and identifying the at least one successful permutation of the server domain combination as the server connection settings; and in response to detecting the connection to the server with the server connection settings, sending the server connection settings to the electronic mail message application.