How to keep track of deliverables for supervised students when you supervise many students? Background: In my area, academics often supervise a large number of students (e.g., 10, 15, 20 students). Many of these students are doing a small thesis as part of either their fourth year or coursework masters. 
I am able to keep all these projects in my head, I do have documentation around each project, and I generally have a good understanding of what needs to be done next on each project. I can also see that one of the skills that a student learns whilst doing a thesis is project management and self-control.

However, I feel like I could develop a better system for recording and managing deadlines and deliverables on student projects. Such deliverables include concrete assessments (e.g., assessed literature reviews; the thesis; project proposals) and informal but required steps (e.g., finalising study materials; ethics applications; literature reviews; preliminary training; etc.). Such a system could let me know when a student has not provided an agreed deliverable by a given date. It would probably also have to accommodate some of the more fluid activities that unfold over time (e.g. data collection; data analysis; write-up; etc.). 

A few features that would be good:


It shouldn't be too onerous too maintain
It should notify when deadlines are not met 
It should highlight current tasks
It should integrate into the supervision process and make it easy to share deadlines with students
It should accommodate different kinds of deliverables (process; outcomes)


Question

What is a good system for helping a supervisor oversee deliverables and deadlines for a large number of research students?
When teaching undergraduates, before my retirement, I tracked/supervised student research/capstone projects with two methods.

1) I required the student to prepare an Excel document with their timeline for completion and the milestone dates.  After a joint review (and revision(s)), I then had the document which I kept in a binder (later on a shared server) which I could track completions and keeping of suspense dates.

2) The other method which I usually used for team projects was a written ONE-PAGE weekly activity report.  (And even up to 1 year ago, they were to be submitted in hard copy.)  The report included a summary of work done in the last 7 days, what is planned for the next 7 days, what were the next 2 milestones and their due dates. 

Additionally, some of my colleagues were in the last few years using a shared Google gdrive folder for a shared calender for each student and project.  I did not do this because I actually wanted a record of how milestones were revised as the project processed.  (Part of good research is being willing to revise the plan in an appropriate manner, keeping all parties informed, and accomplishing the task at hand in the time required)