Deadlines allow you to maintain a schedule within your Application process. You can set a deadline on an applicant task to ensure that your applicants complete that task by a certain date. Once a deadline for a task passes, users can no longer access or edit the task.
NOTE: If you also have a stage deadline applied to the stage, the deadline you place on the individual task will override the stage deadline, provided the task deadline is before the stage deadline. This will allow you to restrict less time for applicants to complete this task compared to the other tasks within this stage.