It seems gnome 3.22 has changed how it gets its $PATH. In previous versions I think either the .bashrc or the .bash_profile were taken into account. Now they're not anymore. I also tried ~/.profile to no avail.
To test it, I ran alt-f2, the command name, and enter. It does not work now on gnome 3.22 unless the executable is in the folders in the normal $PATH of the system (/usr/bin and so on). It caused me an issue of not displaying an app in the menus anymore because it could not find its executable. Changing to the absolute path in the desktop file fixed the issue, but I'd like to tell gnome-shell about the folder and enter the executable name only; I'd rather not copy the app to system-wide folders like /usr/bin.