Virtual environments based on the desktop metaphor provide limited support for creating and managing project-specific work contexts. The paper discusses existing approaches to supporting higher-level user activities and presents a system named UMEA (User-Monitoring Environment for Activities). The design of the system is informed by activity theory. The system: (a) organizes resources into project-related pools consisting of documents, folders, URLs, and contacts, (b) monitors user activities, (c) automatically adds new resources to pools associated with active projects, and (d) provides personal information management tools linked to individual projects. An empirical evaluation of the system is reported.