8.16.0 connectors release notes

Direct index access for connectors and sync jobs

Directly accessing connector and sync job state through .elastic-connectors* indices is deprecated, and will be disallowed entirely in a future release.
Instead, the Elasticsearch Connector APIs should be used. Connectors framework code now uses the Connector APIs by default. See PR 2902.
Docker enterprise-search namespace deprecation

The enterprise-search Docker namespace is deprecated and will be discontinued in a future release.

Starting in 8.16.0, Docker images are being transitioned to the new integrations namespace, which will become the sole location for future releases. This affects the Elastic Connectors and Elastic Data Extraction Service.

During this transition period, images are published to both namespaces:
- Example:
  
  Deprecated namespace
  
  docker.elastic.co/enterprise-search/elastic-connectors:v8.16.0
  
  New namespace
  
  docker.elastic.co/integrations/elastic-connectors:v8.16.0
  
  Users should migrate to the new integrations namespace as soon as possible to ensure continued access to future releases.

Docker images now use Chainguard’s Wolfi base image (docker.elastic.co/wolfi/jdk:openjdk-11-dev), replacing the previous ubuntu:focal base.
The Sharepoint Online connector now works with the Sites.Selected permission instead of the broader permission Sites.Read.All. See PR 2762.
Starting in 8.16.0, connectors will start using proper SEMVER, with MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, which aligns with Elasticsearch/Kibana versions. This drops the previous .BUILD suffix, which we used to release connectors between Elastic stack releases. Going forward, these inter-stack-release releases will be suffixed instead with +<timestamp>, aligning with Elastic Agent and conforming to SEMVER. See PR 2749.
Connector logs now use UTC timestamps, instead of machine-local timestamps. This only impacts logging output. See PR 2695.

The Dropbox connector now fetches the files from team shared folders. See PR 2718.