Now that the install has upgrade to 1.5.11 the external email retrieval and the dashboard controls for it now work as expected.
Regarding fetchmail settings.
I've found the /etc/ebox-fetchmail.rc, and would like to change some settings, after editing the file to change the poll time from the default 3 minutes to 10 minutes and adding the keep command, I see that the changes to the file break the fetchmail process.
If the change button is used in the user corner for the particular retreival account without making any actual changes, I find that the /etc/ebox-fetchmail.rc file is changed back to the default settings, 180 sec and without the keep command.
What would be the best way to attain these desired settings to allow keep and extend the polling time?