Is it possible and if so how, to create a user friendly dashboard that will allow the user to do easy searches based on username, telephone, partial name based on certain time ranges? I have about 20 searches that I need to integrate into a easy to use interface.
Form search dashboards is probably what you will want to look at. It keeps things simple for end users to search the data. Look at the links below, depending on what you need in your dashboard views.
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Developer/Formsearchexamples#Multiple_inputs
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Developer/Step1CreateAForm
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Developer/AdvancedFormSearch
Drop Downs:
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Developer/AddDropDowns