How to pull/push first row from/to a many2many field

hi Experts,

I need your help please. 

I am new to SMAX & i need your expertise.

We have a request to select multiple services in Change Management module. The OOB service field allows only 1 entry. So we had to create a Many2Many field called AffectedServices.

Since we cannot have a rule to set the Many2Many as mandatory, we are trying to find a workaround in order to force the engineer to add at least 1 service.

So we were thinking about this in 2 ways:

1- Keep the OOB service field as mandatory (but hidden), & on saving the record, if the AffectedServices (many2many) field is empty, then the engineer will have to add at least 1 service & then we can pull the first entry & add it to the OOB Service field

2- Make the OOB service field as mandatory (but NOT hidden) & once they add the value in this field, it will be copied to the Many2Many AffectedServices field, & if they need to engineers need to add other services, they can.

Can you help me with the above? I mean what is the function that need to be used in order to either pull from the Many2Many field or to push to the Many2Many field?

Thanks