Patent ID: 8095941

Claim:
A system for generating an electronic notification containing a portion of a day out of office notice, comprising: an application server node operably associated with a database server having an application data supporting personal information management (PIM) system, the application server node configured to execute a personal information management application, the application server node further configured to store the personal information management application; an application programming interface (API) programmatically associated with the personal information management application for allowing requests for services to be transmitted to the personal information management application; at least one of a rich client delegate and a remote enterprise Java bean (EJB) housing the API, the rich client delegate and the remote EJB are programmatically associated with the application server node and the personal information management application, the rich client delegate being configured to receive and transmit data to the API via a network; at least one client computer operably associated with the application server node via the network, each client computer having a user interface (UI) that is programmatically associated with the personal information management application and the API such that a user may input date with timestamp to-the-minute data corresponding to an out of office time period into the UI and transmit the date with timestamp to-the-minute data from the client computer to the API; and wherein one rich client delegate is programmatically supported by a business logic member, the business logic member being configured to receive the date with timestamp to-the-minute data entered by the user via the UI by way of the supporting business logic member, the rich client delegate further configured to transmit the date with timestamp to-the-minute data to the API of the remote EJB; wherein the application server node further includes a mail transfer agent (MTA), the mail transfer agent being programmatically associated with the personal information management application and the API; wherein the mail transfer agent includes three phases, (i) a receiving phase for the an Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server (ii) a handling phase for handling name resolution, group expansion and content analysis, and (iii) a delivering phase for performing local and external mail delivery, wherein the delivery phase includes a delivery extension member for allowing plug-ins to add new functionalities, the delivery extension member being programmatically associated with the personal information management application and the API; wherein the MTA includes an out of office filter member, the out of office filter member being programmatically configured to be a plug-in to the delivery extension member, wherein the MTA includes an out of office service; and wherein the rich client delegate and the remote EJB are configured to receive the transmitted data from the client computer and forward the data to the API.