Adobe PDF Services connector for Microsoft Power Automate

Last updated on Oct 30, 2023

Overview

Adobe PDF Services connector brings the power of Adobe Acrobat Services to all your connected Microsoft applications through Power Automate flows. Realize cost savings and increased productivity by implementing cloud-based document workflows without any code. With access to over twenty PDF API actions, build customized document workflows that are connected to the ecosystem of applications and services in Microsoft Power Platform.

Power Automate flows creates an environment where any supported service can be inter-connected. The use cases for the Adobe PDF Services connector are:

Agreements and Contracts
Content Publishing (Reports, Whitepapers)
Client/Employee Onboarding
Financial Reporting & Invoices
Data Analysis & Retrieval

Microsoft Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate is a tool that connects different apps and services into coordinated multi-step workflows so that repetitive tasks can be automated without the need for complex API coding.

There are three Power Automate concepts that drive all workflows. The first is that all services can expose their API through a connector to the service. Connectors may have Triggers that start workflows. Connectors must have Actions that drive what happens within the workflow. There are common logical connectors between actions that control the workflow based on parameters generated by previous actions.

Microsoft PowerApps

PowerApps is a suite of apps, services, connectors, and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. Using PowerApps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data stored either in the underlying data platform (Microsoft Dataverse) or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Excel, Office 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).

Apps built using PowerApps provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business processes to digital, automated processes. Further, apps built using PowerApps have a responsive design, and can run seamlessly in browser or on mobile devices (phone or tablet). PowerApps "democratizes" the custom business app building experience by enabling users to build feature-rich, custom business apps without writing code.

Prerequisites

Adobe PDF Services connector for Microsoft Power Automate requires credentials to access. Get started for free now. For more details, please see our usage limits and licensing page. If you want to scale your operations, see our pricing page for purchase options and volume discounts.

Accessing the Power Automate interface

To access the Power Automate interface, login to your Microsoft 365 organization. Click the Applications icon on the upper-left corner of the window, and choose Power Automate. You are then redirected to the Power Automate home page: https://flow.microsoft.com.

Note:

If you don't see the Power Automate app, contact your Microsoft 365 administrator.

On the Power Automate home page do the following:

Click Connectors on the left rail of the page.
In the Search field, type Adobe PDF Services.
Select the Adobe PDF Services connector.

Accessing the PowerApps interface

To create an app, start with powerapps.com. Make sure you have an appropriate PowerApps license. If not, contact your Microsoft 365 administrator for help.

After you sign in, on the left rail, click Data, and then click Connections.
In the Search field, type Adobe PDF Services.
Choose the Adobe PDF Services connector.

You can create two types of apps: canvas and model-driven apps. For more information, see Overview of creating apps in PowerApps.

While creating your app, you can add a workflow or task with Adobe PDF Services by using the native integration of Power Automate inside PowerApps by doing the following in the app design interface:

Choose an object in the app.
Click Action.
To configure the workflow, click Flows.

How to get credentials?

Getting started with PDF Services API is easy with just a few steps:

Get started here for a free Adobe account.
After creating a free Adobe account, you’ll obtain your credentials that can be used for all the PDF actions in your flows.
Set up your connection.

Add your credentials to the Adobe PDF Services connector. You can do this by copying the below-mentioned credential details to your one-time connector setup:
- Client ID 
- Client Secret 
Once you complete these steps, you can add any of the PDF Services connector actions to your flow.

Adobe PDF Services actions

Actions

An action represents what you want to happen after the workflow is triggered. Actions allow users to perform operations that can create or manipulate PDF documents using Adobe PDF Services.

Each action has one or more required (and/or optional) inputs needed to implement the action correctly.

Users can choose a region for processing their requests by selecting an optional input in their action. Currently, a user has two alternatives for processing their requests: Europe (Ireland) and US East (N. Virginia) - Default.

The action produces a document output. For example, creating a PDF from a Word document provides you with a PDF of that same document, or exporting a PDF to a PowerPoint file provides you with the output format of PowerPoint.

Note:

The region selected in Adobe PDF Services Connector action is specific to the processing units where Adobe PDF Services are hosted. It can differ from the region of the Microsoft Power Platform environment where your Power Automate flows are hosted. For example, you may create a Microsoft environment in the Canada region and select Europe from the dropdown in Adobe PDF Services Connector's Action. In this instance, all your flows and other Connector operations will be managed in the Canada region, and only operations pertaining to Adobe PDF Services Connector will be processed in the Europe region.

List of Adobe PDF Services actions

For a current and detail list of available actions, refer the documentation.

Migrate your existing flows

Create a new Oauth Server-to-Server connection in Power Automate.
1. You can either migrate existing JWT Service Account Credentials to Oauth Server-to-Server credentials or you can create new Oauth Server-to-Server Credentials here.
2. Create a new Power Automate connection using the Oauth Server-to-Server credentials. You can edit the name of your connection after creating it by clicking on it and selecting edit.
Open your flow and select the newly created connection for all your actions. Alternatively, depending on your volume, you can first export your flow, then, while importing, select connections for all the connectors of the flow. This will update the connections for all the actions at once.