Conditionally Require Approval on List Items

Question

I have a calendar list, and I need to have it so that only items that meet a certain condition require approval. I have tried to use workflow, but when I fire them on the create/change event, the change event gets started every time that an approval status changes also.

Is there any way around this?

Basically what I need is this process:

User creates event-> If X is checked -> require approval Else -> no approval required

And the same thing for when the list item changes.

Note: I'm using SP 2010 Enterprise and have access to SharePoint Designer.

Answer 1

What you can do is set an if condition before the workflow. Since you said you have check box, create a local workflow variable to catch the Boolean value (or you can compare the field directly from "Current Item"'s column). And add a column to the list or content type, called "Item Status". Give default value of it as "Pending". Now you can check both with an if condition.

Set Variable:xyz to [%Current Item:CheckboxName%]

if xyz is equal to 1 
 if [%Current Item:Item Status%] is equal to Pending
   then Start Approval Workflow Task on Current Item with parameter: Approvers

Once the task is approved, then update the list column to

Update item in Current Item

Answer 2

In a workflow you'd do if field is checked, do approval process, else Add an impersenation step and set the item approval status to approved.