We have a base that tracks the status of content. When a Single Select record is set to “Published” an automation sends a note via Slack.
However, when I duplicate a record that is already set to Published, that new record is “published” automatically, and the notification is sent.
I want a way to duplicate the record in every way (basically, to use as a template for a new record), except the Status should be “unpublished” so it doesn’t trigger the automation. Possible?
If you set the field permissions to the status field to “nobody except automations”, then duplicating records won’t include the status field value.
You could also add a checkbox field to the record and have the automation that sends records to Slack to also update that checkmark, signifying that it has been sent. Then your automation could have a condition on it to not run if that checkmark is already checked
Oh wow! Now that’s a cool trick that I never knew about! Very cool!! 
The field permissions is an interesting idea, but… wouldn’t that make it so that my editors cannot change the status field manually? That would defeat the purpose of the Status field.
Yes
I have implementations where Interface buttons trigger automations to update “status” fields so that field permissions dont conflict.
If that wont work for you, use the alternate implementation provided above.
Ah! Interesting. (There is SO much about Airtable that I do not yet know. It looks like now I need to go learn about interface buttons.) Thank you!
Is using record template an option?
@Databaser Record templates can’t take existing values from an existing record and use them in a new record. However, automations can.
So @creativepro, I would just recommend creating an automation to do this for you, instead of using Airtable’s native (and weak) duplicate function. You’ll have to specify each field one-at-a-time when setting up your automation — and you’ll need to maintain it if you ever add new fields — but it would be the way that I would do it.