Patent ID: 8499043

Claim:
In an electronic mail (email) response management system, a computer-implemented method of managing processing of email messages, the method comprising: receiving, in an email response management system, a plurality of email messages, and assigning each of the received email messages to one of a plurality of entities for processing; providing supervisory information to manage the processing of emails by the plurality of entities, wherein providing the supervisory information comprises determining, for each of multiple predefined periods of time and for each of at least two of the plurality of entities, a quantity value indicating a number of email messages that i) have been assigned to the entity but wherein processing of the email message is not yet complete, and ii) have been in process for an amount of time that falls within the predefined period of time, and upon determination of the quantity values, causing to be displayed in a graphical user interface (GUI) a representation that shows, for each combination of one of the at least two entities and one of the predefined periods of time, the determined quantity value for the combination in spatial relation to representations of the assigned entity and the predefined time period to which the determined quantity value relates; and receiving a user selection that determines which of at least two different sets of multiple predefined periods of time to use as the multiple predefined periods of time for which the quantity values are determined, and using the selected set of multiple predefined periods of time in the determination of the quantity values.