Automated workflow

I am trying to understand how truly "automated" the workflow functionality in Clarizen is.  My team is looking for an enterprise-wide automated workflow solution that works sort of like MS Project on steroids.  What we want is the status of dependent tasks in a workflow to be provided real-time to the task owner whose start of that task is contingent on those tasks upstream of it.  So if a project schedule is laid out at the project's outset, with predefined task times, the PM software tracks actual vs scheduled.  But what we don't want is a task owner to be notified that they are scheduled to start a task, but they are still waiting on those upstream tasks to be completed.  We'd like the task owner waiting on those upstream tasks to be provide real-time notifications as to when those upstream, dependent tasks are completed so that they know when they can start it, whether the project is ahead of or behind schedule.  How can Clarizen help provide a solution to that without extensive admin control of the alerts/reminders within the master project sheet?