We're currently in the process of updating Rhodes' webmail client (https://mail.ru.ac.za/) to the latest release.
There are a number of quite significant changes as a result of this change, most of them in the underlying data. The following is a summary of the changes, and how they'll affect you.
Address Book (turba)
The address book has been updated to include a number of new fields. This makes the webmail client's address book more complete, and more like what you'd expect in a regular e-mail client. The most significant difference is that the "Name" field has now been split into "Firstnames" and "Lastname".
The upgrade process will automatically try and convert your existing address book, but may not split up names entirely correctly. Any errors it does make are cosmetic, and don't affect the underlying functionality. If you notice places where it has got names in your address book incorrect, you can simply correct them.
New fields in the address book will be initially blank.
Filters (ingo)
The way your filtering preferences are stored has completely changed. The previous system had some arbitrary restrictions on the number of filter rules you could create, and the maximum length of particular rules. The new version removes the limitations.
The upgrade process will attempt to automatically convert your filter preferences from the old format to the new format. In our testing this has been entirely successful, but it is possible that in some complex cases it won't get things completely correct. As a result, you should carefully check that your mail filters are still configured the way you expect.
Any operational mail filters are completely unaffected by these changes. Changes in your preferences will only take affect next time you edit your filter rules and activate the rule set.
New Webmail Client (dimp)
As part of the update, we've installed the DIMP (Dynamic IMP) version of the webmail client in addition to the existing two (IMP, MIMP). DIMP is an AJAX-based client, which means that most of its operations are performed by your web browser rather than our web server. This is similar to how, for example, Google Mail's webmail interface works. It offers a number of performance improvements, particularly for people using slower connections to the Internet.
DIMP is a fairly new product, and is still a work-in-progress. It is therefore not as feature-rich as IMP itself, and has not been as extensively tested. As such, it's installed for your convenience and experimentation; it is not intended to replace IMP at this stage.
You can make use of DIMP by selecting "Dynamic" instead of "Traditional" from the drop down box on the login screen.