There are a few places where Salesforce uses a formula to calculate a value. The most common place is for a formula field, but other uses can be when defining field values for field updates in workflows and processes.
If you want to use a picklist within one of these formulas, you'll often get syntax errors if you try to use it as you would a normal field. Picklists are special in that they are much less flexible than other fields, so they can only be used within a few select Functions. Here are those functions, broken down:
- Picklist fields can only be used in these functions:
- ISPICKVAL—Compares the value of a picklist to a single value.
- CASE—Compares the value of a picklist to multiple values.
- TEXT—Returns a picklist value’s API Name so that you can work with a reference to the value (even if the displayed value changes) in functions that support text values, such as CONTAINS. (Available in only flow formula resources, formula fields, validation rules, and workflow field updates.)
- Multi-select picklist fields can only be used in these functions:
- INCLUDES
- ISBLANK
- ISNULL
- ISCHANGED (Only in assignment rules, validation rules, workflow field updates, and workflow rules in which the evaluation criteria is set to Evaluate the rule when a record is: created, and every time it’s edited)
- PRIORVALUE (Only in assignment rules, validation rules, workflow field updates, and workflow rules in which the evaluation criteria is set to Evaluate the rule when a record is: created, and every time it’s edited)