Windmaster - my first android app in Google Play

Usually I am a Windows guy working mainly in Microsoft, VMware and Citrix environments for the last couple of years and I did not really care about developing apps for mobile devices.
The main purpose of developing the Windmaster app was to learn about the whole process of developing an Android app and publish it to Google Play.

Goto Windmaster in Google Play
Windmaster calculates wind speed to and from different measurement units and shows recommended kite size and windsurf sail size for kitesurfers and windsurfers.
Not much but a little more usefulness than a Hello World :-)

Coding an app itself is quite straight forward and there a plenty of howtos on the internet using Android Studio or Eclipse.
Getting started building your first app

When building your app you need to pay attention to sign your app with a store file. The result is a signed app package. A second requirement is to run "zipalign" on your signed app packaged with the zipalign tool from the Android SDK. Both steps can be automated in the build process in Android Studio.
Sign your app in Android Studio
zipalign your app packaged (Android SDK)
Howto zipalign in Android Studio

The next step was to register a Google Play Developer Account, which gets linked to your existing Google Account and costs 25 euros payed by credit card.
New to Google Play Developer Console

Publishing an app in Google Play Developer Center is a wizard driven process. First you have to upload your app package file. Next you enter some required information about your app (eg. name, description, content rating, price, screenshots) which will be display in Google Play after publishing. It is a little bit daunting, because you need to provide different screenshot and logo files of different specific sizes.

All in all took me about a day to run through the whole process.
If i would to do it again, it would maybe take half a day, depending on the complexity of the app :-)

GPO for FSLogix Profile Containers

FSLogix Profile Container is a feature of FSLogix that puts a user's entire profile into a VHD or VHDX container. This container is typically stored on a file server and attached dynamically as the user logs on.

If you have not ever heard of FSLogix but you know about roaming user profiles, which have been a major stumbling block to implementing virtual desktops whether Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop, VMware Horizon or Microsoft RDS/VDI, then checkout FSLogix Website.

To enable the FSLogix Profile Container you have to configure a few machine based registry keys. This is not a big deal because today usually you are going to use group policy preferences (GPP) to accomplish this task.

According to FSLogix Admin Guide you are able to use the following registry settings:

Registry key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\FSLogix\Profiles 

• (required) VHDLocations – REG_MULTI_SZ – Network and/or local paths to search for profile VHDs.  Network paths should be in UNC format (e.g. “\\server\share\Profiles”).  Local paths should be in drive letter format (e.g. “C:\Profiles”).
• (optional) VolumeType – REG_SZ – “VHD” or “VHDX” – Default is “VHD”.  Note that VHDX format is only supported on Windows 8 or Server 2012 (or later).
• (optional) VHDXSectorSize – REG_DWORD – "0" or "4096 (0x1000)" – Default is "0" which just triggers VHD default
• (optional) SizeInMBs – REG_DWORD – Number of MBs for new VHDs – Default is 30000 (30 GBs).  Pay attention to Decimal vs Hex when specifying the number.
• (optional) IsDynamic – REG_DWORD – “0” means Full Allocation and “1” means Dynamic.  Full Allocation means that the VHD file is immediately sized to the full specified size of the disk.  Dynamic Allocation means that the file is resized as new space is required.  Full Allocation is slower at creation time, but has better performance when writes happen since all space is already allocated.  Dynamic is faster at creation time but may experience some slowness as the file is resized to accommodate more data.

If you do not like GPP and you prefer a normal GPO for your FSLogix Profile Container settings then here it is.

A ready to use ADMX Template is available for download at Github.
Download ADMX Template for FSLogix Profile Container

Note: Don't for to also download the corresponding *.adml file.