Patent ID: 8065377

Claim:
A communications system comprising: a processor; a database cooperating with said processor and configured to store configuration conventions relating to sets of configuration parameters for accessing electronic mailboxes; and a mailbox interface module cooperating with said processor and configured to communicate with the database and to operate as an agent between a user system and an electronic mailbox of the user, the mailbox interface module configured to receive limited configuration information from the user that does not provide all necessary configuration parameters for accessing the electronic mailbox, infer a mailbox domain from the limited configuration information and retrieve configuration conventions for the mailbox domain from the database that represent potentially valid configuration parameters for the mailbox domain, generate sets of potentially valid configuration parameters to attempt to access the electronic mailbox and based upon the limited configuration information and the retrieved configuration conventions, and generate a subset of the sets of the potentially valid configuration parameters based upon additional user information when at least one attempt to access the electronic mailbox based upon a set of potentially valid configuration parameters is unsuccessful, the additional user information comprising a protocol used for accessing the electronic mailbox.