issue with Joomla and CiviCRM Dashboard as a Menu Item
There are actually several dashboards in CiviCRM. The two you may be confusing are


the "user dashboard" which is visible at http://example.org/index.php/?option=com_civicrm&amp;task=civicrm/user&amp;reset=1
the main "backend" dashboard at http://example.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_civicrm&amp;task=civicrm/dashboard


Both require the user to be logged in or the page will not work.
Note that the url's are constructed differently, and any page you want available to normal (non super) users should point to /index.php and not /administrator.