Checkout the set of Dashboard and Portlet global rights. These create menu links under Personal header, giving users the ability to create their own portlets and dashboards - these, can be shared, including default filter settings.
I use these with global teams that must be reviewing the same data each week. To ensure that they do, I've created my own dashboards and portlets, created saved/default filters and then shared this with the team members.
One must be a bit careful with this, as one can add an existing portlet to a dashboard and then change it's configuration. When doing this, one is not changing the configuration of a copy, one is changing the original portlet. Always best to create one's own portlet, with it's own unique ID, that way, one is sure that the original won't get screwed up. Because of this ability to reconfigure existing portlets, we didn't roll this feature out, generally - only to selected 'expert' users that had a need for such tools, and then, via training, ensured that they knew what not to do, as well as what to do.
Dale