Hi Andre

You can use sub tasks to link all activities to a main task (a Work Breakdown Structure). The due date of the sub tasks drive the overall due date.

If you want to trigger emails to the task owners, you will have to do that yourself as there is no batch process that runs that will check dates and send emails.
This is not hard to do, as the project mgr, you will also want to check due dates, so you could open the calendar up and see what is starting and what is due for completion. You can also set up your own work package report which will also show you this information. You will not get the automatic spam though.

From your other posts, it seems like you want to drive efficiency and accountability, which I would agree is a good thing.

Another approach using OP is to use the “log time” function. This has two advantages over the “spam” approach.
1. It shows trust in the team, they report status as part of their process, you only follow up when they are off track. (people find it easy to delete unwanted emails)
2. It is efficient as the project manager does not spend all day following up everyone, rather they follow up only the issues and it does not get the team off side with a mountain of unwanted emails.

to make this work, you need to get buy in from the team and train them in making updates in OP.
I wrote a 101 on this process yesterday as I think this is what small and medium business want.
I have attached it. It shows you the reports you can run to track your project and suggests how to use OP without having to build an enterprise solution.