Webmail no longer ‘painful’ after revamp

Students logged on to find a new Webmail system Aug. 17 and stepped out of the 20th century.

Larry Conrad, vice chancellor for information technology services, said there is a night-and-day difference between the old and new systems, heralding its intuitive navigation as one of the biggest changes.

The outdated, often-criticized interface of the old system led to calls by several student body presidents to remake the system.

Students often chose to use outside clients — such as Gmail and Microsoft Outlook — out of frustration at the University’s system.

“Compared to a lot of the other solutions, it was pretty out of date and painful to use,” said Andrew Phillips, co-chairman of student government’s tech and web committee.

The process was delayed multiple times by budget cuts.

“Every time we thought we could go forward, we had to put the skids on it,” Conrad said.

By using the open-source software RoundCube, the new Webmail system only had minimal costs for tasks such as fixing bugs and customizing the interface with school colors.

The transition to the new system has been mostly problem-free. The Webmail home page allows users who are nostalgic for the outdated interface to switch back, and ITS is working to modify the icons to make them more recognizable, in response to user feedback.

A new feature that automatically looks up e-mail addresses in the UNC directory is also in the process of repair, after an increased number of requests caused problems. Phillips said this feature was one of the selling points of RoundCube.


Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.