Patent ID: 7266601

Claim:
A server apparatus for managing at least one managed network device connected to a network, comprising: a storage component that stores location information indicating locations of providing sites that provide categorized operational state information associated with the managed network device and a status of the managed network device, wherein different information storage units corresponding to respective location information stored in the storage component store and provide different categorized operational state information, respectively; a generation component that generates an electrical message; a monitoring component that monitors status information of the managed network device by communicating with the managed network device; a determination component that determines whether a change in the operational state of said managed network device has occurred in accordance with the status information monitored by said monitoring component; a specifying component that specifies a category of the monitored status information; a creating component that creates categorized state information according to the specified category; an acquiring component that acquires one of the corresponding location information from among the plurality of different location information stored in said storage component based on the specified category, and that provides the acquired location information to said generation component; and a sending control component that controls a process of sending the electrical message generated by said generation component to a predetermined address, wherein said acquiring component acquires the location information from said storage component when said determination component determines that a change of operational state of said managed network device has occurred, and the generation component generates the electrical message so as to contain the acquired location information associated with the categorized state information of the managed network device when it is determined by the determination component that a change in the operational state has occurred, and wherein the electrical message is sent by the sending control component to a user's computer corresponding to the predetermined address such that the location information can be used by a displaying application in the user's computer to acquire the categorized state information related to the managed network device from the providing site corresponding to the location information.