Adding an attachment via API - Power automate HTTP Post

API & SDK
1

Good morning, <Note in writing this, I have actually Solved the issue – read on!>

I am using Power automate (flow) to integrate between BUZ and ServiceM8. All is going extremely well thank you apart from……

I have created workorders and each workorder is derived from data in an excel file (.xlsm). I would like to add the excel file as an attachment. Manually it works perfectly so i am happy with the basic concepts.

Looking at the howto and the documentation, I have completed Step1 (Create Work order), Step2 (Create attachment) and am having difficulty with step 3 (upload attachment data)

I am having two main issue being;

  1. I don’t understand enough of curl to translate curlopt to the http request I am using.
  2. My data file is in sharepoint - however for what it is worth, I have a base64 string with the content.

My request looks like;

Screenshot
Screenshot543×436 14.5 KB

And this actually works - but it creates a file (when I extract the attachment that looks like….

{“filepath”:"UEsDBBQA

so obviously it appears that the entire body is used as the file content.

If I take away the json and just put $content as the body, I receive the following error. (Actually I don’t receive an error - and the attachment is created - but it has saved the data as the base64 string rather that the actual binary data.

OK - now I have done some updates and now the issue is solved - however it may be beneficial for others to see the solution.

Note this is power automate, macro enabled excel file stored in sharepoint example.

  1. When I get the file content using path sharepoint connector I get the content-type of application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12

  2. In the HTML Post operation, I use this string as the content-type

  3. The accept header is still application/json

  4. The body of the request is; body(‘Get_file_Content_using_Path’) - ie the complete body returned from the sharepoint action get file content using path which looks like;

  5. {

    “$content-type”: “application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12”,

    “$content”: "UEsDBBQA…………………………….”}

the only remaining issue(s) I have are;

  1. Just clicking on the link in service m8 (On a PC web interface) does not allow me to view the file - it recomends appsheet or google sheets - I would prefer to open with excel
  2. If I right click on the link, it downloads the file to downloads with a weird name such as dbo_0059afd6-96a9-494a-b665-23d593c72bcb.xlsm. This also happens when I upload a file via the web interface (drag and drop).
  3. The IOS App opens the file with no issues.

So in essence, my real question now that I have answered the original issue (Uploading) is can I extend serviceM8 so that when I click on a document it actually opens that document directly (In web view).

All the best

Stan

2

Hi Stan,

Nice work getting the upload piece sorted. For anyone else following along, the documented approach is (1) create the Attachment record and then (2) upload the file data to Attachment/{uuid}.file as binary data, which attaches it to the job’s Diary.

On your new question (opening an Excel file directly in the web dashboard): at the moment, Excel/Office files can’t be previewed in ServiceM8 on desktop/web, so they need to be downloaded and opened in Excel (it’s by design).

That means there isn’t a way to “extend” ServiceM8 so a single click opens an .xlsm inline in the web view (the workaround is typically to:

  • convert the file to PDF before attaching, so it can be viewed in-browser as a PDF
  • or host the workbook in SharePoint/OneDrive/etc and add a link in the job (so the browser opens the SharePoint/Office web experience instead)

On the “dbo_…” download filename: we’ve seen cases where downloads default to a system-generated identifier like dbo_<uuid>… in the online dashboard, and there isn’t currently a supported way to customise that automatic naming.

That should clarify what’s currently possible in the web dashboard.

Thanks,
Cody

3

Thanks Cody for the advice/answers

Stan