RPACT Activities

Friedrich Pahlke

October 6, 2025

RPACT Activities

RPACT Activities – What has happened?

  • Last RPACT Annual Meeting: October 2, 2024
  • What has happened since the last meeting?

RPACT Activities – RPACT User Group

The RPACT User Group has grown : currently 22 member companies

  • Boehringer Ingelheim
  • Metronomia Clinical Research
  • F. Hoffmann-La Roche
  • Excelya
  • Dr. Willmar Schwabe
  • Bayer
  • Merck
  • AbbVie
  • Dr. Falk Pharma
  • Klifo
  • FGK Clinical Research
  • UCB
  • GKM
  • Parexel
  • Nestlé
  • Novartis
  • PPD (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
  • Sanofi
  • Pfizer
  • Gilead
  • Allucent
  • Recursion

RPACT Activities – Trainings

15 new presentations/trainings/workshops, e.g.,

August 2025, 13th International Conference on Multiple Comparison Procedures in Philadelphia, USA (website)

RPACT Activities – Trainings (cont’d)

15 new presentations/trainings/workshops, e.g.,

September 2025, ROeS in Graz, Austria

RPACT Activities – Trainings (cont’d)

15 new presentations/trainings/workshops, e.g.,

September 2025, 70th Annual Conference of the GMDS in Jena, Germany

  • Workshop: Good Engineering Practice for Statistical Programming - Pragmatic Solutions and Best Practices for Statisticians
  • Slides: gmds2025.rpact.com

RPACT Activities – Internal R Packages

  • Further development of the RPACT-internal R package rpact.dev
    • Automation of recurring development processes/activities
    • 12 new versions compiled
    • New: deployRpactCloud(), updateClientSpecificURLs(), syncPackageVersion()
  • Further development of the RPACT-internal R package rpact.validator
    • Automation of recurring validation processes/activities
    • 8 new versions compiled
    • New: Simplifying RPACT Connect updates with help of the new utility function createUnitTestAccessFileJson(); several optimizations of the existing functions

RPACT Activities – Deploying RPACT Cloud with rpact.dev

  • rpact.dev::deployRpactCloud()
    • Creates a client-specific copy of RPACT Cloud (rpact.cloud.<client>)
    • Copies only the relevant files & folders
    • Removes outdated tests / unused logos
    • Calls helper functions for updates

Benefits

  • Fast and reproducible client setup
  • Consistent file structure across clients
  • Reduced manual effort & errors

RPACT Activities – Keeping Instances Up to Date with rpact.dev

  • rpact.dev::updateClientSpecificURLs()
    • Replaces links & branding with client-specific values
  • rpact.dev::syncPackageVersion()
    • Aligns package version & release date between
      DESCRIPTION and config.yml

Benefits

  • Automatic re-branding for each client
  • Always correct documentation & links
  • Reliable version consistency in app & package

RPACT Activities – R Package rpact

  • 2 new releases on CRAN since the last annual meeting:
    • rpact 4.2.0: March 24, 2025
    • rpact 4.2.1: July 24, 2025
  • Total: 31 releases on CRAN since October 2018
  • Details: see README on CRAN

RPACT Activities – R Package rpact Src/Docs

CRAN download stats:

The mark of 3000 downloads per month was broken for the first time!

RPACT Activities – Vignettes

  • All vignettes based to Quarto
  • 29 vignettes published on rpact.org/vignettes
  • 2 planned vignettes:
    • Count Data Simulation with rpact
    • Beyond the Basics: Helpful rpact Options, Hidden Features, and Tricks

Currently in progress:

RPACT Activities – Test Coverage

Test coverage has been extended and improved:

  • Overall test coverage of rpact 3.3.1: 70.24%
  • Overall test coverage of rpact 4.1.0: 80.98%
  • Overall test coverage of rpact 4.2.1: 82.02%

RPACT Activities – Last Year: CRAN Release Issues

  • CRAN release of rpact 4.1.0
    • “Dear maintainer, package rpact_4.1.0.tar.gz does not pass the incoming checks automatically…”
    • Overall checktime 11 min > 10 min
    • Uwe Ligges: “For future submissions reduce the overall checktime by few minutes”, Sept. 27, 2024
  • For the next release we need to reduce the overall checktime!

\(\rightarrow\) Done! (see next part: New features implemented in rpact)

Remember the issue in the old rpact release:

  • Execution of all examples is disabled:
    ## Not run: …
    ## End(Not run)
  • On CRAN about 36,000 tests will be skipped
  • The skip function will be called 335-times
  • On CRAN the skip check has bad performance, i.e., takes up to 3 minutes

Example: ?getDesignGroupSequential

Solution since rpact 4.2.0:

  • All unit tests have been removed from the package, except for a minimal test set
  • Unit tests are managed and further developed in a separate (private) repository rpact.tests
  • For customers using testPackage() for installation qualification, the existing solution will automatically download all unit tests
  • Companies that directly run their own test pipelines need to modify their pipelines using the new function setupPackageTests()
  • The approach was a complete success: since then, all CRAN releases have been published within 20 minutes 🎉

RPACT Activities – RPACT Cloud CI/CD Pipelines on GitHub

RPACT Cloud CI/CD Pipelines

RPACT Activities – Policies

Online available at policies.rpact.com

RPACT Activities – SOPs

Online available at sops.rpact.com

RPACT Connect

  • All important information and resources about RPACT on one dashboard page
  • Customer-specific resources, e.g.,
    • training slides,
    • annual meeting slides, and
    • the rpact validation documentation
  • Use RPACT Connect to jump to RPACT Cloud and unlock advanced features
  • Sign up: Please use your corporate email address so RPACT Connect can recognize your SLA membership automatically
  • RPACT Connect: connect.rpact.com

Live Demo

New RPACT Company Website

  • Fully redesigned website rpact.com
  • Now built entirely with Quarto for a smoother, more intuitive user experience

RPACT Activities – Current Work

RPACT Activities – Current Work: Performance

  • We are constantly optimizing the performance of the package
    • e.g. translation of R code into C++ (Rcpp)

RPACT Activities – Current Work: New Features

  • Patient-wise simulations for multiple-hypotheses survival designs:
    • Enrichment
    • Multi-arm multi-stage (MAMS)
    • Especially for small sample sizes, these will improve results accuracy over the current test statistic simulations approach

RPACT Activities – Current Work: Cheatsheet

New rpact Cheatsheet (Coming Soon!)

  • A cheatsheet is a single-page, quick-reference guide that summarizes the most important functions, options, and workflows
  • It is designed to help both new and experienced users quickly recall syntax and key concepts without going through full documentation
  • The format will be similar to the popular Posit cheatsheets – clear, visual, and practical
  • The rpact cheatsheet will be freely available and updated with each major release
  • Feedback from the community is welcome – we will use your input to refine the first version

RPACT Activities – Current Work: Shiny App

RPACT Cloud
  • Saving of designs and user settings
  • Count data support (planned for Q4/2025)
  • Support of enrichment designs (planned for Q4/2026)

Thank you!

Questions and Answers