LinkedIn's API is divided in two, and which half you get decides whether a scheduler can post to a Company Page at all. Preflight publishes to personal profiles today through the Posts API: text, pictures and video, with a first comment. Company Pages are behind a gate LinkedIn controls, described below. How to schedule LinkedIn posts is the walkthrough; this page is the integration.
| LinkedIn through Preflight | What the API allows |
|---|---|
| Text limit | 3,000 characters |
| Media | Pictures and video, up to 20 files |
| Pictures | Up to 10 MB each |
| Video | 500 MB, 3 s to 30 min |
| Thread in one go | No |
| First comment | Yes |
| Alt text | Yes |
| Edit after publishing | No, the API has no edit |
| Delete from Preflight | Yes |
| Comments | Not available through the API |
| Figures reported | None |
| Retention and traffic sources | No |
What goes out
A text post of up to 3,000 characters, with up to 20 pictures or one video, and a first comment, which on LinkedIn is where a link belongs if the post is to keep its reach. Pictures take alt text. LinkedIn is the one network on this list where pictures and a video cannot share a post; a post with both is refused rather than trimmed, because LinkedIn refuses it.
Connecting a profile
Connect with LinkedIn. Preflight asks for your profile and email through OpenID and for the one permission that posts on your behalf. That is all a personal profile needs, and any member can grant it. If LinkedIn ever answers a publish by refusing the permission, which happens after a member revokes it in LinkedIn's settings, the account is marked for reconnecting and the post is held.
Company Pages
Posting to a Page needs LinkedIn's Community Management API, which LinkedIn grants per app after a review, and the review is open only to a developer who verifies with an email on a company domain, not to a personal address. Preflight's application is in that process; until it passes, the Page option is not offered rather than offered and broken. Figures for a personal profile's posts are not exposed by LinkedIn either, so the analytics columns stay off for LinkedIn and nothing pretends otherwise.
What is checked before publishing
Text against 3,000 characters. Pictures must be JPEG, PNG or GIF up to 10 MB and no more than 36 million pixels, each named by its number when there are several. A video must be MP4, 3 seconds to 30 minutes, 500 MB at most and at least 75 KB, which LinkedIn refuses under. Pictures and video together are refused. More than 20 pictures are warned about as dropped. The same checks run on a post sent through the public API.
What the API will not do
A published post cannot be edited; it can be deleted from Preflight. Comments on a member's post cannot be read or answered through the API, and no figures come back for them, which is the half of the API that the Page review unlocks. Until then, LinkedIn in Preflight is publishing with checks, a first comment and a delete.
In the API
The first comment, alt text and the file rules are the same in the API and the MCP server. LinkedIn profiles are on every plan at pricing.
Questions people ask
- Can Preflight post to a LinkedIn Company Page?
- Not yet. LinkedIn grants Page publishing per app through its Community Management API review, which requires a developer verified with a company-domain email. Personal profiles work today; Pages are offered once the review passes.
- Why is a LinkedIn post with pictures and a video refused?
- LinkedIn takes up to 20 pictures or one video in a post, never both. Preflight refuses the combination before scheduling rather than letting LinkedIn refuse it at publish time.
- Does Preflight show LinkedIn post statistics?
- Not for a personal profile. LinkedIn exposes no figures for member posts through the API, so the columns are left off rather than shown empty.