How to Screenshot a Web Page URL in Power Automate
Even the most polished web pages are a long-term work in progress. A URL’s web design and contents might change a month, a week, or even a day after we originally open it.
Screenshotting URL content preserves the layout and content of a web page as it appeared at one moment in time. It’s a great way to document the progress of a web page through multiple design iterations, and it’s an easy process to automate — without writing any code.
You can easily generate URL screenshots in Power Automate using a Cloudmersive Document Conversion API connector action. You’ll end up with a PNG image of your original URL, and you can easily save that image or send it anywhere relevant to your URL documentation pipeline.
Walkthrough
I’ll demonstrate this API in the context of a quick, automated cloud flow that triggers when new items are added to a SharePoint List.
The list I’m using is based on one of SharePoint’s generic list templates for tracking technical support issues. My flow will retrieve a hyperlink value from a SharePoint List Item (in this case, a link to a specific web page), screenshot the URL contents, and attach the screenshot back to the list item.
I’ll first open my trigger action and select my SharePoint Site Address & List Name from each respective dropdown.
Next, I’ll add a new action and search for Cloudmersive connectors. This search brings up a list of several Cloudmersive connector options. I’m looking for the Cloudmersive Document Conversion connector with the green logo.
From here, I’ll click “See more” to view the actions list, and then I’ll CTRL+F search for an action labeled Take screenshot of URL. I’ll select this action once I locate it.
As a quick note, if it’s your first time using this connector, you’ll have to create your Document Conversion connection at this stage. You’ll need a Cloudmersive API key for that, and you can get one by creating a free account on the Cloudmersive website (free API keys provide a limit of 800 API calls per month with no commitments).
My connection is already set, so I’ll click now “Show all” to view the Take screenshot of URL advanced parameters.
I’ll first enter the hyperlink column value from my SharePoint List Item in the Input/Url parameter.
After that, I’ll review some options to customize my screenshot in a few different ways. I can request extra loading wait time (useful for URLs with tons of media assets to load), and I can also set the height and width of my screenshot.
The default ExtraLoadingWait value is 5 seconds, expressed in milliseconds. If I wanted to increase the loading wait time to 10 seconds, I would enter “10,000” in the Input/ExtraLoadingWait parameter. However, I’ll be leaving the optional parameters alone in this flow.
In the final step of this flow, I’ll use the SharePoint Add Attachment action to attach my PNG screenshot to the original list item. This screenshot will become available to anyone with access to my list. I’ll name my screenshot PNG using the original web page URL.
After I save my flow and initiate a test, I’ll create a new item on my Issue tracker list and include a URL. In this case, the URL will simply lead to the Cloudmersive website home page.
When my flow finishes running, I’ll find the URL screenshot included as a file attachment on my list item.
Now I can easily create URL screenshot documentation the moment links are added to an item on my Issue tracker support list.