Adobe PDF Compression for Email

Overview

FlowLibs - Adobe PDF Compression for Email automatically shrinks oversized outbound PDFs so they stay under the mailbox attachment limit. When a PDF lands in a watched SharePoint folder, the flow measures it, and if it exceeds the configured limit it compresses the file with Adobe PDF Services (real REST API). It then emails the smaller file as an attachment — or, if the compressed file is *still* too large, archives it to SharePoint and emails a share link instead.

Why it matters: Large attachments bounce off mailbox size caps or clog inboxes. Auto-compression keeps documents deliverable, with a share-link fallback so nothing ever fails to send.

Build note: The Adobe PDF Services *connector* (shared_adobepdftools) cannot be authored through the API/solution build path — its file-upload parameter is not bindable outside the interactive designer. So this flow calls the Adobe PDF Services REST API directly via the built-in HTTP action. Going live requires only the Adobe client credentials in the environment variables.

Use Case

Anyone emailing large PDFs (operations, finance, legal, general staff) wants them automatically reduced to a sendable size — or linked when they are still too big — without manual re-saving or zipping.

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Connector	API name	Actions used
HHTTP	http	POST /token POST /assets PUT (upload) POST /operation/compresspdf GET (status/download)
SharePoint	shared_sharepointonline	GetOnNewFileItems GetFileContent CreateFile CreateSharingLink
Office 365 Outlook	shared_office365	SendEmailV2

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Go live

Populate flowlibs_AdobeClientId / flowlibs_AdobeClientSecret, authorize the SharePoint + Outlook connections, point flowlibs_PdfWatchFolder at your library, then turn the flow On.

Different size cap / strength

Change flowlibs_MaxAttachmentMB (e.g. 10 for stricter mail servers) and flowlibs_CompressionLevel (HIGH = smallest, lowest fidelity).

Anonymous links

Change the Initialize Link Scope value to anonymous (if tenant sharing policy allows) and Initialize Link Type to edit for editable links.

Per-recipient routing

Drive flowlibs_NotificationEmail from the PDF's metadata or a lookup instead of a fixed address.

Archive sweep

Add a Recurrence-triggered sibling flow that compresses every PDF over the cap on a schedule to reclaim storage.

Keep original

The source file is left in place; the compressed copy goes to a separate folder, so the high-res original is always retained.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

@div(mul(length(outputs('Get_Original_File_Content')?['body']?['$content']),3),4)

@greater(outputs('Compose_Original_Size_Bytes'), mul(int(variables('varMaxMB')),1048576))

@concat('client_id=',encodeUriComponent(variables('varAdobeClientId')),'&client_secret=',encodeUriComponent(variables('varAdobeClientSecret')))

@or(equals(variables('varJobStatus'),'done'),equals(variables('varJobStatus'),'failed'))

@body('Create_Sharing_Link')?['link']?['webUrl']

Customize & download