Daxtron Labs’ MailBot For Microsoft Mail

From 1994-1996 we developed and sold an add-on email agent for Microsoft Mail. A friend that worked for Microsoft at the time complained of getting hundreds of internal e-mails. This was before spam was the universally recognized problem it is today. After checking around, we found it was a pervasive problem in connected organizations. We agreed to help him out, but found that it required access to the proprietary Microsoft Mail Folder system (this was before 'Open Systems' became a marketing tool). To make the connection required "discovering" how the Microsoft Mail Store operated. The only other company to attempt this was Banyan Networks. Behind the interface was a full PROLOG engine, with varying user levels from novice to system programmer. Forms and condition picking (now found in Outlook) are translated into PROLOG rules, and could interact with other rules that could provide things like definitions. The user could make the system as easy or as complex as they required, and had access to the full PROLOG engine (called LOGIX). The system could also do full text retrieval and return files in response to user queries. Echoes of this are seen in the e-mail enabled version of the Alicebot.

Users reported that it reached the sought after “Third Level of Technology”: they only noticed it when it wasn't there anymore! When they were forced to change to other systems without MailBot support, suddenly they realized just how much it was really doing in the background. As for our “research” into the Microsoft Mail system, Microsoft invited us to give them a presentation on the technology, and put us up in a 5-star hotel for a week on their dime. XOOM Technology purchased the rights to the program, but they never marketed it to the general public.