Issue
When I try to unmap Name or Subject in Heroku Connect, I get a warning message like this:
For an optimal experience using Heroku Connect we recommend that you map the Name field.
Are you sure you want to un-map Name?
I'd like to unmap these, but I don't know what "optimal experience" means in this context and I'm worried about what the impact would be.
Resolution
The Explorer tab in the Heroku Connect dashboard, which is a tool that can be used to look at data both in the database and in Salesforce, will use the Name or Subject, depending on the object, as the human-readable identifier for a record. In order to maximize the utility of the Explorer, we recommend "name" or "subject" whenever available, so we have something to fall into that column on the dashboard.
In the case of Contact, Name is a field calculated by combining First and Last name. Unfortunately, the Explorer view will not show those combined for Contact if Name is missing. Ultimately, it's up to the customer if that's a sufficient reason to denormalize the database and has both Name and First/LastName fields mapped, but it is our recommendation for these reasons that they stay mapped.