Embodiments of the invention provide a universal timeline application that may be used to effectively manage the access and display of content related to multiple aspects of a production. The universal timeline application provides an interface presenting users with a visualization of all the different data elements of a production, represented in an intuitive, easily navigable, three-dimensional display. Icons representing data elements may be plotted on a three dimensional grid, wherein each axis of the grid represents a different dimension of the data elements. Metadata defined for a given data element specifies a location on the three dimensional grid to plot the given data element.