Windows Store Apps in non-persistent linked clone environments

[b34ny]

We're going bald over here trying to manage the user experience as it pertains to UWP Windows Store Apps in linked clone environments.  Anyone have secrets on managing Store Apps in a non-persistent environment (build 1709)?

Example: Base image has commonly included apps like Calculator, Camera, Tips, Windows Stickies, etc.  Users logging into that pool inherit those Windows Apps upon first logon.  Base image gets updates and republished later, including changes (updates) to the included Windows Store apps.  Users logging into that pool with previously inherited Windows Apps now break, tiles go missing, apps show in the start menu but don't show available with a Get-StartApps powershell command.

It seems that keeping the Windows Store and it's Apps in sync with profile management (we use FSLogix) between pools and through base image updates is impossible to manage well.  Resetting the user profile generally resolves Windows Apps issues but that is not a live/production solution that's acceptable to our users.

[b34ny]

Attached some supporting information.  In the windowsapps.txt file you can see that StickyNotes is an installed UWP application in the Program Files\WindowsApps location.  In apps.txt (which is an output of Get-StartApps in powershell) StickyNotes is not listed (why not?) and in charleston_start2.png you can see where it should be in the application list and the missing tile (set by a customlayout.xml).

Running a commonly found powershell instruction on the internet in the user context seems to only re-register the apps the user can already see: get-appxpackage -packageType bundle |% {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode ($_.installlocation + “\appxmetadata\appxbundlemanifest.xml”)}

Capturing the user persona and moving it between Windows 10 machines with UWP/Store apps seems untenable at best because we cannot directly administer the Windows 10 Apps or Start Menu.  Thoughts?

[Tech2U]

We are having the same issue.   Did you ever find a solution to this?

[VirtuallyANewb]

Having the same problem, here. Non-persistent linked clones, default apps go poof. We found some success with adding the following to our Default Apps and FTA config:

[IncludeFolderTrees]

<LocalAppData>\Packages\

I say 'some' success because the apps still drop off for some of our users. Additionally, in order for the change to take effect we've had to rebuild that user's profile. It's not ideal, so I'm hoping someone else has had this problem and has a better solution.