Added draft of release notes

docs/release_notes/v-1.4.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+# Airbyte 1.4.0
+
+Happy new year! Airbyte version 1.4.0 was released on January 16, 2025. We’re excited to share new improvements and changes to the Airbyte platform.
+
+## 🚀 Platform Changes
+
+Platform changes improve Airbyte for everyone with a self-managed instance.
+
+### Configure the schema refresh rate
+
+Use the new environment variable, `DISCOVER_REFRESH_WINDOW_MINUTES`, to set how often Airbyte refreshes schemas, in minutes. The default is once per day in self-managed instances. The maximum is once per minute. Set this to 0 to disable automatic schema refreshes. [Learn more about configuring Airbyte](../operator-guides/configuring-airbyte.md).
+
+```yml title="values.yaml"
+worker:
+  env_vars:
+    DISCOVER_REFRESH_WINDOW_MINUTES: 1440
+```
+
+### Connectors support custom image registries
+
+Connectors can now use custom image registries rather than Airbyte’s public Docker registry. If you configure Airbyte to use a custom image registry, it now automatically uses that registry for connector images as well. Previously, only platform images supported this. In this example, we set Airbyte’s `values.yaml` file to pull all images from GitHub.
+
+```yml title="values.yaml"
+global:
+  image:
+    registry: ghcr.io/NAMESPACE
+```
+
+[Learn how to set up custom image registries](../deploying-airbyte/integrations/custom-image-registries).
+
+:::note
+If you have custom internal connectors that specify an image using a fully qualified domain name (for example, `example.com/airbyte/source-postgres`), Airbyte ignores your configured image registry and pulls images from the domain specified by that connector.
+:::
+
+### Reduced resource consumption
+
+Instances of Airbyte running multiple connections at a time now consume fewer resources, thanks to optimizations to the `airbyte-worker` pod.
+
+## 🚀 Self-Managed Enterprise Changes
+
+To learn more about Airbyte Self-Managed Enterprise, [talk to our sales team](https://airbyte.com/talk-to-sales).
+
+### Audit logging for role-based access control (RBAC) permissions changes
+
+We are excited to share that Self-Managed Enterprise now supports audit logging. This initial release focuses on providing you with full visibility into permission changes. This data will ensure you have records of any unauthorized changes and insider threats, making it easy to continue meeting your compliance obligations while using Airbyte.
+
+Audit logging requires you to configure Airbyte to read from and write to a blob storage solution (S3, GCS, Azure Blob Storage). This is configured in Airbyte’s `values.yaml` file. To enable audit logging, add the following environment variables:
+
+```yml title="values.yaml"
+server:
+  env_vars:
+    AUDIT_LOGGING_ENABLED: true
+    STORAGE_BUCKET_AUDIT_LOGGING: # your-audit-logging-bucket
+```
+
+Once enabled, audit logs are written to the `/audit-logging/` directory as JSON files. These files have the following naming convention: `<yyyyMMddHHmmss>_<hostname>_<random UUID>`. 
+
+## 🐛 Bug fixes
+
+- **Canceled syncs do not rerun until the next scheduled sync**: If you previously cancelled an in-progress sync, and the next sync as configured in the connection frequency was behind schedule, Airbyte would immediately start a new sync. In practice, many users had to choose to ‘Cancel Sync’ twice in a row to stop moving data.  Airbyte now automatically waits until the next scheduled sync to move data.
+
+- **Reduce rate limit errors from the `airbyte-cron` service**: We fixed an [issue](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/30691) reported by the community that caused excessive rate limit errors on the `airbyte-cron` pod when users scheduled connections using the Airbyte CRON capability. 
+
+- **Autorecovery for hanging connections**: Airbyte now packages a service to detect connections blocked by the unlikely event that a sync becomes stuck, and remains in a perpetual ‘in-progress’ state without moving data. This heartbeat service will detect syncs that are hanging, and automatically create a new job attempt.

docusaurus/sidebars.js

@@ -726,8 +726,10 @@ module.exports = {
       label: "Release Notes",
       link: {
         type: "generated-index",
+        description: "We release new self-managed versions of Airbyte regularly. Airbyte Cloud customers always have the latest enhancements.",
       },
       items: [
+        "release_notes/v-1.4",
         "release_notes/v-1.3",
         "release_notes/v-1.2",
         "release_notes/v-1.1",