How to ban a PlayFab player from a Zendesk ticket

To ban a PlayFab player from Zendesk, install Questwell, open the ticket about the player, and in the sidebar choose Ban. Pick a reason, choose a length under How long, add an optional note and click the confirm button, which reads like "Ban for 7 days". PlayFab records the ban on the player's PlayFab id, and Questwell adds an internal note and the questwell_banned tag to the ticket.

Before you start

Bans are a moderation action. In Questwell's settings, Allow bans and lifting bans must be on, and the agent must be in Who can moderate. That setting defaults to admins only. Add custom role ids or group:<id> for your trust and safety team, comma separated. Admins can always do everything.

Set Longest ban (days) for moderators who aren't admins. The default is 30. Only admins can ban permanently, and 0 removes the limit, permanent included.

Steps

1. Open the ticket. Questwell finds the player by the PlayFab id ticket field, the requester's emails, or a PlayFab id or Steam id in the ticket text. If it finds nobody, type an email, PlayFab id, Steam id or display name into the lookup box and click Find.
2. Check the Bans section. Bans in force are listed first, with reason, start and end or permanent, then lifted and expired bans. If the player already has a ban in force, Questwell won't add another one.
3. Choose Ban. The form explains what will happen before anything is sent.
4. Pick a reason under Reason recorded in PlayFab. Choose a preset or Other (type the reason) and write your own, up to 140 characters.
5. Pick a length under How long. The list only shows lengths your role is allowed.
6. Fill in Note for the ticket (optional). It goes into the internal note, not to PlayFab.
7. Confirm. Questwell re-reads the player, checks again that no ban is in force, and sends the ban once.

Reasons and lengths

With the default longest ban of 30 days, a non-admin moderator sees 1 to 30 days only.

Lift a ban from an appeal ticket

When a player appeals, open their ticket, review the ban history and choose Lift ban. Pick or type why the ban is lifted and confirm. It lifts the bans in force, adds an internal note and tags the ticket questwell_unbanned. Lifting needs the same Who can moderate permission.

What Questwell won't do

Bans are on the PlayFab id only. Questwell never bans IP addresses or device families, and IP addresses on existing bans are never shown in the sidebar. It also can't delete the player, wipe player data or unlink platforms.

If the connection drops

PlayFab has no idempotency keys for bans. If the answer is lost, Questwell doesn't resend. It reads the player again and counts the ban as done only if a new ban with this reason appeared. If it still can't tell, it says so and keeps Confirm off until you refresh. The same ban from the same state is refused once it is logged on the ticket, so a double click or a second tab can't add a second ban.

What it costs

Questwell has two plans with every feature: Team at $99 a month per Zendesk account for up to 12 agents and admins, and Scale at $8 per agent per month from 13. There is a 14-day free trial, Zendesk asks for a card at install, and Zendesk bills it monthly. Every setting is in the Questwell documentation.