I am logging it and it keeps on returning the value 2. even though the field contains the internal id

I am not sure what you mean by value of 2?

take a look now. the search should only return one value

It looks like you have 2 columns being returned in the search - "custbody_pi_createdfrompi" and "createdfrom"

yep, depending on the data types, it should be

soId.custbody_blah

or it should be

soId.custbody_blah[0].value

let me try it for a minute

If they are list/source vs raw string/int. Exact same behavior you would get running a search and

.toJSON()

on the results.

ok. it was a text field

yep makes sense

thanks for your help