Patent ID: 8819145

Claim:
A method for formatting messages, comprising: receiving, by a database, a plurality of messages that have been translated by a consolidated message gateway stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and executed by a processor from a plurality of platform-specific message formats into a generic message format, wherein the generic message format comprises one of an extensible markup language (XML), a hypertext markup language (HTML), or a standard generalized markup language (SGML); indexing, by the consolidated message gateway, the plurality of messages using at least one of a plurality of index fields; receiving, by the consolidated message gateway, at least one of a plurality of threading fields; searching, by the consolidated message gateway, the database using the at least one of a plurality of index fields and based on the at least one of a plurality of threading fields; threading, by the consolidated message gateway, the plurality of messages in the database that have a common value in the at least one of a plurality of threading fields into at least one of a plurality of threads, wherein the at least one of the plurality of threads comprises message contents in the generic message format of each of the plurality of messages that have been translated from the plurality of platform-specific message formats into the generic message format; sending, by the consolidated message gateway, the at least one of the plurality of threads to a client device for display in a consolidated user interface, wherein the consolidated user interface comprises a plurality of fields that are a union of a plurality of fields of each of a plurality of platform-specific user interfaces associated with the plurality of platform-specific message formats, and wherein the consolidated user interface is independent of the plurality of platform specific user interfaces; and sending, by the consolidated message gateway, a copy of an outgoing message to each of a plurality of client devices associated with a recipient, wherein the plurality of client devices is selected by a sender, and wherein each copy of the outgoing message sent to one of the plurality of client devices is in a different message format selected by the sender.