A workspace container provides data content in a generic way with interfaces and tools common to data of different types. The container has an owner, and may include one or more activities, which each have an objective and are associated with various resources to accomplish the objective. User interaction in the container transforms the container contents and is persisted with the container. Different data types are represented uniformly from the perspective of data input, data access, and display rendering. Additionally, common tools can be embedded within the container, which receive content items and user-generated content as input to transform the container contents at a runtime of the container. The container may also be collaborative, with multiple users having access to the data content simultaneously (except for actual content collisions). The container may be exposed to another user through request-to-perform techniques as passed through a work package.