I'm currently working on a way to automatically approve newspages, if they meet certain criteria. My first approach was to make a workflow in SharePoint Designer. Boy, was that a pain? I simply couldn't get it right. I then switched to implementing an eventhandler, which would catch all new or changed newspages, and check the moderation status, subsequently approve the page if it's ok. In order to do this, I had to run the approval rutine with elevated privileges, as a normal contributor cannot approve content. After trying out the standard impersonation techniques using advapi32.dll. This is not working either, as SharePoint always reverts to the actual user. So I ended up using a COM+ approach, setting up a serviced component which runs as a user with approver permissions. This works – sometimes… It seems to be a bit unstable, but maybe that's the eventhandler in B2 not always kicking in, in a timely fashion.
If anybody out there is interested in the solution, please let me know and I'll post an article on the subject.
steinhof