A great example of using Salsa's flexibility to customize a campaign headquarters' look and feel comes courtesy of Evolve Strategies.

The setup in this case is by a consulting shop giving its client a one-screen overview of how its action is proceeding. You'll have to click the screenshot below to get the full effect:

How'd they build it?

This page takes advantage of Dashboards' customizability ... although in this case, of course, the dashboard builder and intended audience aren't necessarily the same.

I've numbered the elements on that page. Here's how each was built:

1. The simplest item on the page and also, perhaps, the most important one: a human-readable explanation to the reader what the page is about with ready-at-hand contact information. This is a sticky, which DIA users can set up under the Dashboard tab.

2. The Tell-A-Friend report -- listing friends told for each tell-a-friend page -- is one of the pre-fab reports anyone can toss on a dashboard. Find it by clicking the little black "+" in the upper left corner.

3. Here's where the fun begins. This is a custom report returning actions taken on this page. I know the custom reports section is daunting, but this is a pretty easy one to build: you too can make one for your action. Just create a new custom report selecting "Online Actions" for "reporting on" ... add the basic fields, and, if needed, apply as a condition "campaign key equals [number]".

4. This custom report is even easier: it's reporting on "Supporter" with nothing else but a list of the fields to include to show online signups. There are a variety of similar reports available as system defaults under the black "+".

5. It's basically the same as #3, in this case referencing "Share Your Story", which is set up using our Petition tool even though the call to action on the page isn't very petition-like. It's just a custom report of signers to that particular petition.

(#5 is also a handy illustration of some of the reporting considerations that might go into setting up an action. DIA has a number of tools that can create an online "submit" form. If this page were built as a regular Signup page, the report wouldn't work the same way: you'd probably want to create a custom Group specific to that signup page and filter based on the Group's membership, or else filter on the "Source Details" field which indicates the originating page of any new web signups. All roads lead to Rome, but the route needs advance planning.)

Thanks, Evolve! Anyone else have triumphs or tribulations with dashboards and reports to share with the world?