A communications platform contains a message processing platform along with an XML message format which provides for the reception, organization, summarization, filing, storage, synthesis, routing, formatting, and intelligent processing of XML-based electronic messages and SMTP electronic mail. The platform allows a user to define an endpoint table which correlates message attributes with different user endpoints such as home phone, cell phone, email etc. Received messages are sent to a first endpoint in accordance with the message attributes and the endpoint, if no receipt is received from the first endpoint, a second endpoint is selected from the endtable and the message is re-routed.