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Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Help
11g Release 1 (11.1.1)
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Working with Briefing Books

If your organization licensed Oracle BI Briefing Books, then you can work with briefing books.

The following topics explain what briefing books are and how you work with them:

What Are Briefing Books?

A briefing book is a collection of static or updatable snapshots of dashboard pages, individual analyses, and BI Publisher reports.

You can:

About the Table of Contents in a PDF Version of a Briefing Book

The PDF version of a briefing book contains a table of contents that is automatically generated. It contains an entry for each dashboard page, analysis, and report in the briefing book. Each of these entries includes a time stamp and the page number within the PDF file. The time stamp value depends on how the content was saved to the briefing book. If the content was saved as updatable, then the time stamp is current. If the content was saved as a snapshot, then the time stamp is the time of the snapshot.

Indented beneath each entry for a dashboard page are any briefing book links included on that page, up to a maximum of nine links. These entries do not include timestamps. For example:


Table of Contents
 
My Dashboard Page 7/11/2008 9:15:20 AM . . . . . .1
    Years to Dollars Dashboard . . . . . . . . . .2
 

The administrator can modify the template for the table of contents so that the table of contents that is generated in your briefing books might have a different look.


Note:

The table of contents is always generated in English. Other languages are not supported. Therefore, you might want to translate the tables of contents that are generated in briefing books.

For more information about including BI Publisher reports with briefing books, see "About Briefing Books and Printing BI Publisher Reports".

Adding Content to New or Existing Briefing Books

You can add the content of dashboard pages (including pages that contain BI Publisher reports) or individual analyses to briefing books. You can add the content to existing briefing books or to new briefing books that you create.

To add content to a new or existing briefing book:

  1. Open the dashboard that contains the content to add to a briefing book. For information, see "Opening and Using Dashboards".

  2. Navigate to the page to add or that contains the analysis to add.

  3. Perform one of the following actions:

    • To add the contents of the dashboard page to a briefing book, click the Page Options toolbar button on the dashboard page and select Add To Briefing Book.


      Note:

      The Add to Briefing Book option is not available on an empty dashboard page or if the Show Add to Briefing Book box in the "Dashboard Properties dialog" has not been selected for the page.

    • To add the results of an individual analysis to a briefing book, locate the analysis on the dashboard and click the Add to Briefing Book link.


      Note:

      This link is displayed only if the Add to Briefing Book option was selected in the Report Links dialog when the analysis was added to the dashboard. For information about setting the Add to Briefing Book option, see "Report Links dialog".

    The "Save Briefing Book Content dialog" is displayed.

  4. Click Browse to display the "Save As dialog".

  5. In the Save As dialog, to save the contents to:

    • A new briefing book, specify the location in which to save the briefing book in the Save In field, enter a name for the briefing book in the Name field, optionally enter a description in the Description field, and click OK.

    • An existing briefing book, select the briefing book and click OK.

  6. In the Save Briefing Book Content dialog, complete the remaining fields as appropriate.

  7. Click OK.

    The content is added to the briefing book.

Editing Briefing Books

You can edit briefing books to reorder content, delete content, and change the content type, navigation link properties, and content description.

To edit a briefing book:

  1. To edit a briefing book:

    • In the catalog, in the global header, click Catalog to display the "Catalog page".

    • On a dashboard page, open the dashboard page that contains the briefing book.

  2. Navigate to the briefing book to edit and click Edit.

    The "Edit Briefing Book dialog" is displayed.

  3. To change content:

    1. Select the content.

    2. Click Edit to display the "Page Properties dialog".

    3. Change the content type, the number of navigation links to follow for updatable content, or the content description as needed.

    4. Click OK.

  4. To reorder content, select the content and then drag and drop it to the desired location.

  5. To delete content, select the content and click Delete.

  6. Click OK.

Downloading Briefing Books

You can:

  • Download briefing books to your computer in MHTML format and then share them for offline viewing.

  • Download briefing books in PDF format and print them.

    The PDF version of a briefing book contains an automatically generated table of contents. For information about the table of contents, see "About the Table of Contents in a PDF Version of a Briefing Book".

To download a briefing book:

  1. In the global header, click Catalog to display the "Catalog page".

  2. Navigate to the briefing book to download.

  3. Perform one of the following actions:

    • To download the briefing book in PDF format, click PDF and then open or save the file.


      Note:

      The Adobe Reader application is required to view or print a briefing book PDF file.


      Note:

      BI Publisher reports that are contained in the briefing book are only included in the PDF file if the reports themselves are enabled for PDF output.

    • To download the briefing book in MHTML format, click Web Archive (.mht) and then open or save the file.

      Downloaded briefing books are saved with an .mht file extension and can be opened in a browser. You can then email or share the briefing book.

Adding a List of Briefing Books to a Dashboard Page

You can add a list of briefing books to a dashboard page.

To add a list of briefing books to a dashboard page:

  1. Edit the dashboard. For information, see "Editing Dashboards".

  2. Navigate to the page to which you want to add a list of briefing books.

  3. From the "Dashboard Objects pane", drag and drop a folder object into a section.

  4. Hover the mouse pointer over the folder object in the Page Layout area to display the object's toolbar and click the Properties button.

    The "Folder Properties dialog" is displayed.

  5. In the Folder field, enter the folder that contains the briefing books to list.

  6. In the Expand box, specify whether to show an expanded view of the folder.

  7. In the Show RSS Link box, specify whether to add an RSS feed option to the folder.

  8. Click OK and then click Save to save the dashboard.

    The folder is added to the dashboard. On the Dashboard page, to:

Using Agents to Deliver Briefing Books

To use an agent to deliver a briefing book:

  1. Create or edit the agent to be used to deliver the briefing book. For information, see "Creating Agents".

  2. In the "Agent editor: Delivery Content tab", click Browse to select the briefing book.

    When the agent runs, the briefing book is delivered.

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