Multiple Email Attachments from SharePoint Library files

[WarrenBelz]

Hello All,

This may be a bit ambitious, but it is a business requirement we are trying to automate.

I need to "bundle" photos belonging to a site, along with a PDF summary sheet on an email to our customer.

The number of photos vary from 1 to 10. Size is not an issue for the email as they are taken off the PA camera facility.

There are individual bits of this possible, but I am struggling with how to put it all together:

• The PDF is easy enough and is currently filed in SharePoint (where I know the path and identifier), and I am already sending several others with Flows. The content may be able to be sent directly before filing ? (first question)
• I can bundle photos from a collection on the device onto email attachments, but these photos have been taken previously and are jpg files in a SharePoint Library.
• I can collect the items required from the library, but this does not get me the file content, only the URL and Identifier.
• If I knew the number of attachments (and I have been asked to make this scaleable), I could use a Flow by sending the identifiers.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[v-xida-msft]

Hi @WarrenBelz ,

How do you generate the PDF file in your SP Library? Using PowerApps and Power Automate or upload manually?

Do you want to embed these Photo Images into the PDF file?

If you uploaded your PDF file into your SP Library manually, as a direct solution, you could consider attach this PDF file and several images as attachments of an email (I assume your PDF file and several images stored in same SP Library), then send it to your other customers (flow's configuration as below😞

Please take a try with above solution, then several images and PDF file would be sent as attachments of an email to your customers.

In addition, if the PDF file that you generated is based on PowerApps and Power Automate, in other words, you pass the HTML content from your canvas app to your flow, then create this PDF file based on this passed HTML Content, and you want to embed several images into this PDF file, please check and see if the following blog would help in your scenario:

http://johnliu.net/blog/2017/10/generate-any-pdf-documents-from-html-with-flow

I have made a test on my side, the flow's configuration as below:

Within the "Create File" action, type "Ask in PowerApps" dynamic content within the File Content field, to specify the parameter you need to pass from your canvas app.

More details about firing a flow from an app, please check the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wl9AtxWdkg

Best regards,

[WarrenBelz]

Hi @v-xida-msft ,

Thanks for the quick response.

Your ideas have got me part of the way - to specify further:-

• Currently the PDF is generated through a "Quick Parts" Word merge (as it is a client form), PDF'd in OneDrive and filed in a SharePoint Library. Metadata allows me to retrieve the URL/Identifier easily in Power Apps.
• As a fallback if necessary, I can try to get the same form in HTML in PowerApps and PDF through OneDrive, but am happy to attach this form as now if possible.
• For embedding the images - I already do this with a client signature form, but in that case I know there are only two images and get the file content in a Flow with the URL (and John Lieu's Flow specs are similar to the first part of mine getting the files). My Flow on this is attached.

But the problem here with the images is that they in a bigger library of about 20,000 images (not currently a folder I can simply take all content from). As noted, I can do a collection of these and obtain all the URL/Identifier details. The document is in another library of smaller, but still significant size, but again I can easily get the same metadata.

So putting that all together, is the answer to get it all and put it in a temporary place to then gather with the array? If so your valued help on the specification for this would be greatly appreciated.

[v-xida-msft]

Hi @WarrenBelz ,

If you want to attach multiple image files as attachments within an Outlook email once time, I think the solution I provided above may be the only available solution to achieve your needs.

You could consider initialize a temporary array variable to store the image data retrieved from SP Library, and then assign it to the Attachments field within the "Send an email" action.

Note: The amount of images attached to this email would be subject these known HTTP Request Limits in Power Automate, please check the following article for more details:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/limits-and-config

Please consider take a try with the solution I provided above, then check if it could help in your scenario.

Best regards,

[WarrenBelz]

Hi @v-xida-msft ,

Thanks for the advice - this was my thought (in concept anyway) at the start, however I am totally struggling as to how I

initialize a temporary array variable to store the image data retrieved from SP Library,

when the data from the collection of these items only includes the URL and identifier, not the content.

The answer is probably returned data from a Flow - I will post it on that forum to see if any Flow gurus have any ideas.

[Digital]

@WarrenBelz ,

Did you ever work out how to get the contentBytes for a file in the SharePoint library?

I have a collection of attachments I would like to send as attachments in an email. I can only attach files in my attachments collection if the user has attached a new document using camera, sketch or attachment control.

I would also like the option of attaching files previously saved to a document library but can't get the actual file content.

[WarrenBelz]

@Digital ,

That is a very old post . . I now do it with the Word Online (Business) connector and simply grab the file content and merge it into a picture merge field in Word.

For an email, you can do the same thing, but if you want multiple files, that produces a bit more of a challenge.