Portals are one of our most popular features because they let you share assets without requiring people to sign in to Dash.
The trade-off is that, because visitors don't log in, Dash can't identify who downloaded an asset or collect personal information such as their email address.
If you're looking to compare downloads by region, distributor, retailer, department or another group, there are two ways to achieve similar reporting.
Option 1: Create a portal for each group you want to compare (recommended)
If you want to compare downloads between different audiences, the easiest approach is to create a separate portal for each one.
For example, instead of a single Distributor Portal, you could create:
Distributor Portal (US)
Distributor Portal (EMEA)
Distributor Portal (APAC)
Although this means creating a few extra portals and sharing separate links, each Portal acts as a proxy for that audience.
📝 Note: Whether this is the right approach will depend on your use case and priorities. You may decide you need to split out your portals in a different way, due to a competing requirement. For example, you may have to put everything into one global portal, because you're embedding the portal in your website, so you can't have multiple links. But if comparing engagement between different audiences is paramount, this approach may need to be chosen.
You can then click View Activity from your Portals page to compare each portal side by side, including:
Total downloads
Most downloaded assets
Download trends over time
This approach works for any audience you'd like to compare:
If you want to compare by... | Create a portal for... |
Region | US, EMEA, APAC |
Country | UK, France, Germany |
Distributor | Each distributor |
Retailer | Each retailer |
Department | Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, etc |
Brand | Each brand |
Customer type | Wholesale customers, Retail customers |
Partner tier | Gold partners, Silver partners, Bronze partners |
Tip: Decide what you'd like to report on first, then create one portal for each value of that attribute.
💡 Learn how to create a portal in How to use portals to create a public-facing view of your Dash.
Option 2: Instead of using portals, add your portal users as internal Dash users
Instead of creating portals and sending a link which can be accessed by anyone, you can add users as internal Dash users with download permissions to specific folders.
For example, you can add your distributors, retailers or partners as Basic users. Basic users can download and share assets, but can't upload or edit them.
Once users are signed in, you can view user-level analytics, i.e. look at which assets have been downloaded by specific users.
Learn how to invite new users to Dash: How do I invite new users to Dash?
⚠️ The drawback with this option is that it doesn't automatically group by region, department, etc, if this is something you want. You'd have to cross reference these users to those groups. For this reason, we'd only recommend this option if user-specific information is your priority.
Frequently asked questions
What analytics are available for portals?
This is covered in a our dedicated article: How can I analyse portal usage?
Can Dash identify portal visitors by IP address?
No. Dash cannot provide IP addresses for portal visitors due to data privacy rules.
Can I see who downloaded an asset from a share link or collection?
No. Like portals, public share links and collections don't require users to sign in, so Dash can't identify who downloaded the assets.