Validation in an editable grid

I copied an example from the Appian documentation and it has the same behaviour as my grid.  If you remove the value from the first column of the grid and hit the submit button it will not highlight the grid cell in red.  If any of the other columns that value is removed it has the proper behavior of highlighting the grid cell in red.  Does anyone have any work arounds?  Any help or suggestions are apreciated.  Appian should enter a bug for the grid behavior.  The item to remove is any first name.

Here is the code, just copy and paste into an interface and you should see the problem.

a!localVariables(
  /*  
  * local!employees is provided in this recipe as a way to start with hard-coded
  * data. However, this data is identical to the data created from the entity-backed
  * tutorial. Replace the hard-coded data with a query to the employee data store
  * entity and all of the employee records from the tutorial will appear.
  *
  * To replace this data with your own, replace (ctrl+H or cmd+H) all references to
  * local!employees with your data source, either via rule input or local variable.
  */
  local!employees: {
      { id: 1, firstName: "John" , lastName: "Smith" , department: "Engineering" , title: "Director" , phoneNumber: "555-123-4567" , startDate: today()-360 },
      { id: 2, firstName: "Michael" , lastName: "Johnson" , department: "Finance" , title: "Analyst" , phoneNumber: "555-987-6543" , startDate: today()-360 },
      { id: 3, firstName: "Mary", lastName: "Reed" , department: "Engineering" , title: "Software Engineer" , phoneNumber: "555-456-0123" , startDate: today()-240 },
  },
  a!formLayout(
    label: "Add or Update Employee Data",
    instructions: "Add, edit, or remove Employee data in an inline editable grid",
    contents: {
      a!gridLayout(
        totalCount: count(local!employees),
        headerCells: {
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "First Name" ),
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "Last Name" ),
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "Department" ),
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "Title" ),
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "Phone Number" ),
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "Start Date", align: "RIGHT" ),
          /* For the "Remove" column */
          a!gridLayoutHeaderCell(label: "" )
        },
        /* Only needed when some columns need to be narrow */
        columnConfigs: {
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:3 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:3 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:3 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:3 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:3 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "DISTRIBUTE", weight:2 ),
          a!gridLayoutColumnConfig(width: "ICON")
        },
        /*
        * a!forEach() will take local!employee data and used that data to loop through an
        * expression that creates each row.
        *
        * When modifying the recipe to work with your data, you only need to change:
        * 1.) the number of fields in each row
        * 2.) the types of fields for each column (i.e. a!textField() for text data elements)
        * 3.) the fv!item elements. For example fv!item.firstName would change to fv!item.yourdata
        */
        rows: a!forEach(
          items: local!employees,
          expression: a!gridRowLayout(
            contents: {
              /* For the First Name Column*/
              a!textField(
                /* Labels are not visible in grid cells but are necessary to meet accessibility requirements */
                label: "first name " & fv!index,
                value: fv!item.firstName,
                saveInto: fv!item.firstName,
                required: true
              ),
              /* For the Last Name Column*/
              a!textField(
                label: "last name " & fv!index,
                value: fv!item.lastName,
                saveInto: fv!item.lastName,
                required:true
              ),
              /* For the Department Column*/
              a!dropdownField(
                label: "department " & fv!index,
                placeholderLabel: "-- Please Select-- ",
                choiceLabels: { "Corporate", "Engineering", "Finance", "Human Resources", "Professional Services", "Sales" },
                choiceValues: { "Corporate", "Engineering", "Finance", "Human Resources", "Professional Services", "Sales" },
                value: fv!item.department,
                saveInto: fv!item.department,
                required:true
              ),
              /* For the Title Column*/
              a!textField(
                label: "title " & fv!index,
                value: fv!item.title,
                saveInto: fv!item.title,
                required:true
              ),
              /* For the Phone Number Column*/
              a!textField(
                label: "phone number " & fv!index,
                placeholder:"555-456-7890",
                value: fv!item.phoneNumber,
                saveInto: fv!item.phoneNumber,
                validations: if( len(fv!item.phoneNumber) > 12, "Contains more than 12 characters. Please reenter phone number, and include only numbers and dashes", null )
              ),
              /* For the Start Date Column*/
              a!dateField(
                label: "start date " & fv!index,
                value: fv!item.startDate,
                saveInto: fv!item.startDate,
                required:true,
                validations: if( and( isnull(fv!item.id) , todate(fv!item.startDate)  < today() ), "This Employee cannot have a start date before today.", null),
                align: "RIGHT"
              ),
              /* For the Removal Column*/
              a!imageField(
                label: "delete " & fv!index,
                images: a!documentImage(
                  document: a!iconIndicator("REMOVE"),
                  altText: "Remove Employee",
                  caption: "Remove " & fv!item.firstName & " " & fv!item.lastName,
                  link: a!dynamicLink(
                    value: fv!index,
                    saveInto: {
                      a!save(local!employees, remove(local!employees, save!value))
                    }
                  )
                ),
                size: "ICON"
              )
            },
            id: fv!index
          )
        ),
        addRowlink: a!dynamicLink(
          label: "Add Employee",
          /*
           * For your use case, set the value to a blank instance of your CDT using
           * the type constructor, e.g. type!Employee(). Only specify the field
           * if you want to give it a default value e.g. startDate: today()+1.
           */
          value: {startDate: today() + 1},
          saveInto: {
            a!save(local!employees, append(local!employees, save!value))
          }
        ),
        /* This validation prevents existing employee start date from changing to a date in the future*/
        validations: if(
          a!forEach(
            items: local!employees,
            expression: and( not( isnull( fv!item.id)), todate(fv!item.startDate) > today() )
          ),
          "Existing Employees cannot have an effective start date beyond today",
          null
        ),
        rowHeader: 1
      )
    },
    buttons: a!buttonLayout(
      primaryButtons: a!buttonWidget(
        label: "Submit",
        submit: true
      )
    )
  )
)