Convert SharePoint List Hyperlinks to PDF Files with Power Automate
The contents of an important URL link shared on our SharePoint list can change or become inaccessible at any given time. By creating a PDF version of that URL’s contents, we can indefinitely “freeze” one iteration of its contents for future reference, and we can rest assured the resulting document will always be accessible on our device.
The only question is: how do we handle SharePoint list URL conversions to PDF efficiently without writing a bunch of code?
Automating Value-Add File Conversions in Power Automate
In Power Automate, we can seamlessly handle our SharePoint URL to PDF conversion process using the Cloudmersive Document Conversion connector.
Thanks to Power Automate’s seamless built-in Office 365 integrations, we can easily retrieve list URLs the moment they’re added to our SharePoint list, and we can just as easily attach the PDF versions to the original SharePoint list items after we make our URL to PDF conversions. This dynamic process involves writing zero code, and it results in PDFs being immediately accessible to our SharePoint list stakeholders.
SharePoint List URL to PDF Conversion Walkthrough
To show this concept in action, we’ll walk through a quick example flow which performs the following:
- Triggers when SharePoint list items are created on a specific list
- Extracts & converts hyperlink URLs to PDF
- Attaches the resulting PDF back to the original SharePoint list item
In my example, I’ll be using the SharePoint template list called Issue Tracker. I’ve customized this basic template to ask for URL links related to an issue encountered on a website (or third-party application). Creating a PDF version of that link will ensure the exact problem is automatically captured the moment the link is added.
Create an Automated Cloud Flow
To begin, we’ll select the option to create an Automated cloud flow, and we’ll trigger that flow with the When an item is created (SharePoint) trigger.
Configure the SharePoint Trigger Action
We’ll begin by configuring our When an item is created trigger. We’ll select our Site Address and List Name from each dropdown menu.
Locate & Configure the Cloudmersive Document Conversion Connector Action
Next, we’ll add an action and search for Cloudmersive connectors. We’re looking for the Document Conversion connector, which has a green logo.
We’re looking for an action called Convert a URL to PDF on this connector’s actions list. In my screenshot, we’ll notice that option listed in the actions list preview.
If we see that option in our preview, we can select it right away. Otherwise, we’ll need to click “See more” to view the full actions list, and then CTRL+F search Convert a URL to PDF from there.
After we select this action, we’ll need to create our Cloudmersive Document Conversion connection. To do that, we’ll need to get a free API Key (this allows a limit of 800 API calls per month with zero commitments), and we can get one by creating a free account on the Cloudmersive website.
Once we’ve created and authorized our connection, we’ll click “Show all” to view our Convert a URL to PDF conversion parameters.
We have four basic parameters here, outlined below.
- Input/ExtraLoadingWait — this can be used to give our input URL more time to load & render assets before the URL contents are screenshotted and converted to PDF
- Input/ScreenshotHeight — this is for specifying the height of our resulting screenshot
- Input/ScreenshotWidth — this is for specifying the width of our screenshot
- Input/URL — this captures the URL we’re converting to PDF
In my example, I’ll leave the first three fields blank (i.e., use default values for each), and I’ll pass the Issue Link value to the Input/URL parameter.
Now, when new hyperlinks are added in a SharePoint list Issue tracker ticket, those URLs will automatically convert to PDF in our flow.
Attach the Resulting PDF to the Original SharePoint List Item
To wrap up our three-step flow, we’ll use the SharePoint Add Attachment action to attach the resulting PDF file back to the list item the hyperlink URL originated from.
As we can see in the above screenshot, we’ve used the ID value from our trigger step to specify we’re attaching content to the original SharePoint list item, and we’ve dynamically named our new PDF document using the original Issue Link URL. We’ve then used OutputContent from the Convert a URL to PDF conversion action to create our PDF attachment.
Test the Flow
We’ll now save our flow and run a quick test. Since we created an Automated cloud flow, we’ll need to perform the trigger action to initiate the test (i.e., create a list item with a hyperlink URL).
When our flow finishes running, we’ll find the PDF version of our test hyperlink URL attached to the original SharePoint list item. Note that the Convert a URL to PDF conversion stage can take anywhere from several seconds to several minutes depending on the traffic Power Automate and Cloudmersive servers are experiencing.
Conclusion
In this walkthrough, we learned how to create an automated flow that captures a SharePoint hyperlink URL, converts the URL contents to PDF, and attaches the PDF back to the original SharePoint list item.
We can now easily enhance support documentation (as shown in this example) and any other workflow which depends on one specific iteration of a URLs contents.
