Patent ID: 7558825

Claim:
A method of email administration comprising the steps of: receiving in a transcoding gateway from a client device one or more email display status attributes describing one or more email display capability statuses for a domain; receiving in the transcoding gateway from a sender an email display capability status request for the domain, wherein the capability status request comprises a domain identification and the email display capability status request includes a sender identification identifying the sender, further comprising: determining, in dependence upon the sender identification, that the sender is authorized to send email to a connection address in the domain, further comprising: finding, in dependence upon the sender identification and in dependence upon the domain identification, at least one sender authorization record, wherein: the sender authorization record represents authorization for the sender to send email to a connection address in the domain; the sender authorization record comprises sender authorization attributes including a connection address in the domain; and finding at least one email display capability record for the domain further comprises finding, in dependence upon the domain identification and in dependence upon the connection address, at least one email display capability status record for the domain; finding, in dependence upon the domain identification, at least one email display capability status record for the domain, wherein the email display capability status record for the domain includes: a display capability identification; a display capability description; a connection type, wherein the connection type is an indication of the protocol or communications technology to be used to send an email or digital objects to client devices; a connection address, wherein the connection address is an indication of where to send email or digital objects from the transcoding gateway; a transcode type, wherein the transcode type is an indication whether digital objects in email are to be transcoded in the transcoding gateway or forwarded for further processing elsewhere; an availability field, wherein the availability field is a status indication of whether a display capability is currently available, including indicating whether a client device or display device is powered off or on; and a recent usage field, wherein the recent usage field is a status indication of a recent time when a capability was used; and sending at least one email display capability status attribute to the sender.