What is the best design for an inquiry system (email to database) automatically filtered by some category?

Question

We are working on an inquiry management system using J2EE. We're looking at a feature, allowing users to send inquiries to particular mail-id and entering into the database. Catch is to automatically allocate it to some categories.

Answer 1

Require the users to make the enquiry using an online form. Require them to choose a category before accepting the enquiry. Then you ahve the option to send via email, save to database, or both. When sending via email, you can append the category to the subject line with some kind of identifier token, e.g., [cat=TECHSUPPORT]. This will allow the message to be filtered via the email client.

Answer 2

Thanks for the answer..

To extend, incase it is a random email(not from a web form..) How would you go about determining the category?

Answer 3

For handling external email, I would look into using a Bayesian filter to categorize them. This is how many of the most successful spam filters work, and that technique can be adapted for classifying content other than spam. I haven't used it, but try NClassifier. If that doesn't work, search for Bayesian filter and see what turns up.