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contentType: tutorial
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# Automating a business workflow

Remember [our friend Nathan](/courses/level-one/chapter-3.md)?

**Nathan 🙋:** Hello, it's me again. My manager was so impressed with my first workflow automation solution that she entrusted me with more responsibility.<br/>
**You 👩‍🔧:** More work and responsibility. Congratulations, I guess. What do you need to do now?<br/>
**Nathan 🙋:** I got access to all our sales data and I'm now responsible for creating two reports: one for regional sales and one for orders prices. They're based on data from different sources and come in different formats.<br/>
**You 👩‍🔧:** Sounds like a lot of manual work, but the kind that can be automated. Let's do it!


## Workflow design

Now that we know what Nathan wants to automate, let's list the steps he needs to take to achieve this:

1. Get and combine data from all necessary sources.
2. Sort the data and format the dates.
3. Write binary files.
4. Send notifications using email and Discord.

n8n provides [core nodes](/integrations/builtin/node-types.md#core-nodes) for all these steps. This use case is somewhat complex. We should build it from three separate workflows:

1. A workflow that merges the company data with external information.
2. A workflow that generates the reports.
3. A workflow that monitors errors in the second workflow.

## Workflow prerequisites

To build the workflows, you will need the following:

* An [Airtable](https://airtable.com/) account and [credentials](/integrations/builtin/credentials/airtable.md).
* A [Google](https://www.google.com/account/about/) account and [credentials](/integrations/builtin/credentials/google/index.md) to access Gmail.
* A [Discord](https://discord.com/) account and webhook URL (you receive this using email when you sign up for this course).

Next, you will build these three workflows with step-by-step instructions.