Patent ID: 7552179

Claim:
A method of sending an envelope journaling report for journaling an e-mail message sent to one or more recipients, wherein the method is performed at a server in a network environment topology including one or more e-mail servers, the email servers including a capability to send and receive e-mails within the network environment topology, the method comprising: determining that envelope journaling is enabled; determining that a journaling mailbox address is specified for an entity on a per entity or per mailbox basis; setting a journaling property in the e-mail message, if not already set, that identifies the e-mail message as a message to be journaled; adding the specified journaling mailbox address to the journaling property; checking the journaling property for an indication that an envelope journaling report has already been sent to one or more journaling mailbox addresses in the journaling property; wherein the envelope journaling report includes a present list of recipients of the e-mail message and envelope journaling information corresponding to the e-mail message; sending the envelope journaling report, along with at least a portion of the e-mail message, to one or more first journaling mailbox addresses specified in the journaling property; not sending the envelope journaling report to one or more second journaling mailbox addresses specified in the journaling property when, based on the checking of the journaling property, the one or more second journaling mailbox addresses have already been sent the envelope journaling report; indicating in the journaling property that the envelope journaling report is to be sent to the first one or more journaling mailbox addresses; sending the e-mail message to the one or more recipients specified in the e-mail message; and wherein the sent e-mail message includes an indication that the envelope journaling report is to be sent to the first one or more journaling mailbox addresses specified in the journaling property.