Briefing books provide an alternative way of viewing measure and location information. In a view, measures display in a hierarchical measure structure that aligns measures to their respective areas of strategic focus. Briefing books display measures regardless of the measure structure.

Measures in a briefing book share some characteristics with measures in a view. If a measure has submeasures, you can drill down the measure structure as you can in a view. Like a view, the briefing book is dynamic and updates whenever new information is entered into the system.

A briefing book contains sections. Sections are pages or chapters within a briefing book. Figure 1‑7 shows the Balanced Metrics Management book opened to the Objectives section. Sections contain measures that are individually selected or returned from a filter. For example, a briefing book can have a section that shows all red measures. Separate briefing books can be created for individual users, departments, or for an entire organization. A user who has the appropriate privileges can add, remove, and edit book sections.

A section displays multiple measures and locations on one side of the briefing book. The opposite side of the book displays the measure’s dashboard. Sections can contain links to related information such as maps, document links, internet links, and e‑mail links. Link tooltips display the link type, link, or map, followed by the link name. For example, the tooltip for a link to the Performance Highlights map displays Map: Performance Highlights.