# Running a trial

Once a trial is recruiting you work from its **overview** rather than the setup wizard.
This chapter covers what the overview shows and the controls available while a trial is
live.

## The overview at a glance

The overview brings together the trial's status, its enrolment, and its participants:

- **Status**: whether the trial is *Recruiting*, *Not recruiting* (recruitment
  closed), or *Completed*.
- **Enrolment plan**: progress against the two recruitment gates.
- **Participants**: counts by status (in screening, active, completed, withdrawn) and
  the ability to look at individuals.
- **Schema**: the sequences and phases, and how participants are distributed across
  them.

## Enrolment by arm

The **Enrolment by arm** panel shows, for each active/sham arm: how many participants
are enrolled, how many have completed, its completion target, and its randomisation
share. Above the table two figures track the gates:

- **Completed X / target**: progress toward the irreversible stop.
- **Enrolled Y / limit**: progress toward the reversible pause.

See {doc}`enrolment` for exactly how these behave.

## Adjusting targets and the rate mid-trial

From this panel you can edit each arm's **completion target** and the trial's
**estimated completion rate** while the trial runs, then save. The derived total and
enrolment limit recompute immediately and the gates use the new values. Lowering a
target below an arm's current enrolment is allowed, targets are soft goals, so no
confirmation is needed.

## Participant statuses

Participants move through a sequence of statuses as they progress; withdrawals free a
recruitment place, completions count toward the completion target. The full journey is
described in {doc}`participants-lifecycle`.

## Communications

The trial can send templated emails to participants at defined points (for example
registration information). These are configured per trial and queued automatically as
participants reach the relevant point.