Adobe PDF Office-to-PDF-A Conversion Pipeline

Overview

This flow watches a SharePoint records library and, whenever a new Office file (Word / Excel / PowerPoint) is uploaded, converts it to PDF with Adobe PDF Services, co-files the PDF into a Converted folder with archival metadata, optionally deletes the original (replace mode), and posts a conversion summary to a Microsoft Teams channel.

Why it matters: Mixed Office formats are poor for long-term records. A single, durable PDF copy per record gives compliance teams a consistent archive and a Teams audit trail of every conversion.

PDF/A note: Adobe PDF Services' REST API does not emit PDF/A — its createpdf operation produces standard PDF only. This flow therefore produces standard PDF and records the intended conformance level (flowlibs_ConformanceTarget, default pdfa-2b) as metadata on the converted file. To produce true PDF/A at go-live, route the standard PDF through a PDF/A-capable service (a dedicated PDF/A REST tool, an on-prem converter, or AEM Forms).

Use Case

Records / compliance teams want every Office document dropped into a controlled library normalized to a single PDF format automatically, with the original optionally retired and the team notified — no manual export-to-PDF step.

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Connector	API name	Actions used
HHTTP	http	POST /token POST /assets PUT (upload) POST /operation/createpdf GET (status/download)
SharePoint	shared_sharepointonline	GetOnNewFileItems GetFileContent CreateFile ODataStylePatchFileItem DeleteItem
Microsoft Teams	shared_teams	PostMessageToConversation

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.

True PDF/A

After Download Converted PDF, add a second conversion step against a PDF/A-capable service (dedicated PDF/A REST API, on-prem converter, or AEM Forms) and file that output instead; flowlibs_ConformanceTarget tells it which level to target.

Replace vs co-file

Flip flowlibs_ReplaceOriginal to true to retire the source Office file after a successful conversion.

Metadata columns

Create the records library with SourceFileName, ConversionEngine, ConformanceTarget, ConvertedOnUtc columns so Update Converted PDF Metadata lands; adjust the item object to match your column names.

Image inputs

Adobe createpdf also accepts common image types — widen the extension list in Check If Supported Office File and the MIME map in Initialize Media Type.

Backfill

Add a scheduled (Recurrence) sibling flow that lists existing Office files and runs the same conversion subflow over the backlog.

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.

@concat(substring(variables('varSourceFileName'),0,sub(length(variables('varSourceFileName')),length(variables('varSourceExtension')))),'pdf')

@toLower(last(split(variables('varSourceFileName'),'.')))

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

@{coalesce(outputs('Start_CreatePDF_Job')?['headers']?['location'],outputs('Start_CreatePDF_Job')?['headers']?['Location'])}

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

Customize & download