Field Rendering Using Numbers in Picklist

I am tracking office leases in Salesforce.  I have a picklist field called "Lease Term" that has the values 1 through 10.  Meaning it is a 1 year lease, 2 year lease, etc.  The information for each lease is listed in its specific year (see below.  I then Render the appropriate number of sections(years) based on the Lease Term so we only see pertinent data.   I do this using Lease_Term >= 3 (or whatever the total years would be.  This is working GREAT for the sections!

So now my problem...  Using the same logic I have a quick entry page that is always set to "edit" mode that allows me to quickly add in data for dates, base rents, and Triple Net information.  I only want the correct number of rows to show up on the quick entry section so I am using the same Lease_Term__c>=3 (or 4 or 5 etc) on each FIELD.  For Lease_Term picklist values between 1 and 9 this is working as expected.  In this picture I have selected 6 Years and the correct rows are showing up EXCEPT for the row that is set up as Lease_Term__c>=10. 

 The problem fields are "Date of 9th Increase", "Base Rent 9", "Triple Net 9".  These all have the render set up in the same way Lease_Term__c>=10.  (It is year 10 because there is a base year and then increases 1 through 9.  The first year there is no increase just a base rent.  I mention that just in case you were thinking Base rent 9 should be with picklist value 9).  See below for odd field render behavior.

Now what gets even more interesting is if I set Lease_Term__c to the value of 10 this is what happens.

All fields that have rendering on them disappear.  Again, their set up is Lease_Term>=4 (for example).  Which 10 is greater than 4 so it should still be showing.  

Keep in mind that my sections with the same logic are rendering perfectly.

Please let me know if I am overlooking something.  Thanks for all your help!  

I say it whenever possible, but I can't say it enough.  Thank you Skuid team for building a BEAUTIFUL tool that makes our lives so much easier.  Thank you for the phenomenal support and community too.  I can't thank you enough for all your help.  Skuid rocks!

Rich,  I think the problem is that picklist fields are really stored as text,  so when you try to use a “less than or equals to” operator you are going to get unexpected results.  Becuse its text the question “Is 10 greater than 4” is being evaluated as false.  So when 4 gets put in your picklist field - the fields on 10 are getting rendered.  I’m honestly not sure how the first example is working. 

  Have you ever tried to sort numbers that were really text?  I have this happen when sorting tables in MS Word.  When you sort by the number colum you get things like this. 

1
10
11
2
3
31
32

The same thing is happening here. 

Here are a few work arounds. 

1. Add a leading 0 to picklist values 1 - 9.   (OK - that’s not really an option is it…)
2. Change your conditional rendering so the 10 line only shows when the picklist value = 10.   Using a direct “=” condition makes sense because this is the only condition when you want the fields to show up (while in lines 9 - 1 there are more than one condition)
3. Add a formula field to your object that takes the picklst field and turns it into a number.  The formula would look like this:   value(text(Picklist_Field))  .   Then do your rendering on the formula field. 


Hope this helps… 

On a side note.  I’m going to ask our devs why we even allow greater than and less than operators on picklst fields… That seems like its confusion just waiting to happen. 

This makes perfect sense. Thank you for the quick reply! I just switched the field type to number only allowing 2 digits. And then I created a validation rule to make sure the number is always between 1 and 10. Works great! Thanks for the help Rob!