Answered

Approval Item link -> itemUrl not working for certain filetypes (PDF)

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by davidstephenbar

I have a Flow using a trigger "on selected file" that generates an approval request with a link to the file to be approved. I've tested it with three file types, and XLSX and PPT files are working fine, but PDFs cause the link to not display/be generated. The link takes you to the file on sharepoint.

I tried to generate a sharing link as a work-around but my organization doesn't allow sharing links. The flow sends a request through email as well as a teams message through a chat bot.

Below is the emailed approval request, showing the 'Link to item for review' hyperlink when choosing a working filetype. If i choose a pdf instead, that text will not be generated.

Below is the chatbots message. The text for the links are generated regardless of the file type chose, but in the case of a PDF, the 'direct link to item' text will not act as a hyperlink (interacting with it does nothing).

Anyone else experience this issue before?

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (4)

Answers (1)

fchopo 8,003 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @davidstephenbar

Instead of using "itemUrl" could you try to use "AbsoluteUri" ?

Hope that helps!

Ferran

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
davidstephenbar 9 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. For some reason absoluteuri does not show up as an option in the dynamic content list, I'm not quite sure why though.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
fchopo 8,003 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @davidstephenbar

Could you try the following:

Hope it helps!

Ferran

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

davidstephenbar 9 on at

Like (0)

Report

So for posterity's sake, here is the cause of the problem and the solution I figured out:

The issue was a combination of a couple of things. My organization's sharepoint policy doesn't allow us to download or print files when browsing our sharepoint from certain devices. When referencing a file using itemUrl, it gives a direct link to that file, which results in the browser trying to download it, or in the case of this flow, it builds an empty link.

I looked at the link that gets created when using the 'copy link' function directly in sharepoint and found some parameters attached to the link that aren't created when using itemUrl. The full link looks like:

www.fakelink.com/docs/thisfile.pdf?csf=1&web=1

The csf is to be set to 1 when sharing with people who already have access, and otherwise it will try and initiate a download.

My solution was to take the itemUrl link, turn it into a string and then concatenate with ?csf=1&web=1.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No