13. An electronic out-of-office message analysis system comprising: a mailer module comprising instructions stored in memory for receiving an electronic out-of-office message generated by a user in a natural language, the electronic out-of-office message including a time window of absence and an alternate named contact; a temporal expression module comprising instructions stored in memory for identifying and normalizing a temporal expression from text content of the user's out-of-office message to generate a normalized representation of the time window of absence; a named entity recognition module comprising instructions stored in memory for identifying the alternate named contact from the text content of the user's out-of-office message by recognizing named entities in the user's out-of-office message and cross-referencing the recognized named entities with a named entity directory for identifying an alternate named contact corresponding to one of the recognized named entities; a representation module comprising instructions stored in memory for generating a structured representation of the user's out-of-office message which includes a reference to the user, a reference to the identified alternate named contact, and the normalized representation of the time window; an out-of-office module comprising instructions stored in memory for storing the structured representation of the out-of-office message in a database and notifying the user that a conflict exists between the user's out-of-office message and an out-of-office message of the identified alternate named contact, by comparing the normalized representation of the time window included in the structured representation of the user's out-of-office message with a normalized representation of a time window included in a structured representation of the identified alternate named contact's out-of-office message; and a processor which executes the instructions.
13. An electronic out-of-office message analysis system comprising: a mailer module comprising instructions stored in memory for receiving an electronic out-of-office message generated by a user in a natural language, the electronic out-of-office message including a time window of absence and an alternate named contact; a temporal expression module comprising instructions stored in memory for identifying and normalizing a temporal expression from text content of the user's out-of-office message to generate a normalized representation of the time window of absence; a named entity recognition module comprising instructions stored in memory for identifying the alternate named contact from the text content of the user's out-of-office message by recognizing named entities in the user's out-of-office message and cross-referencing the recognized named entities with a named entity directory for identifying an alternate named contact corresponding to one of the recognized named entities; a representation module comprising instructions stored in memory for generating a structured representation of the user's out-of-office message which includes a reference to the user, a reference to the identified alternate named contact, and the normalized representation of the time window; an out-of-office module comprising instructions stored in memory for storing the structured representation of the out-of-office message in a database and notifying the user that a conflict exists between the user's out-of-office message and an out-of-office message of the identified alternate named contact, by comparing the normalized representation of the time window included in the structured representation of the user's out-of-office message with a normalized representation of a time window included in a structured representation of the identified alternate named contact's out-of-office message; and a processor which executes the instructions. 22. The electronic out-of-office message analysis system of claim 13 , further comprising a plurality of client computers, each configured for generating out-of-office messages, the electronic out-of-office message analysis system being resident on at least one of the client computers and a server computer in communication therewith via a network and wherein the database is linked to the at least one of the client computers and the server computer via the network.