Tips on how to organize multiple iCloud calendars in iCal 5.0

Question

Found some workarounds but looking for tips from others since I have not been using Lion and the new iCal very long.
Situation:
I use iCal for work and have my own calendars and manage my boss's multiple calendars. An upgrade to Lion has thrown a monkey wrench as we now have to use iCloud to have read/write access to the calendars. The new look of iCal is very cluttered with all of these entries and color coding is not enough to be easy on the eyes to differentiate what is what. The new simplified look hides the master list of calendars which acted as a legend. Now in order to figure out what calendar an entry belongs to, I have to click to reveal the list of calendars and make a guess (due to the # of calendars the colors are used more than once) or click on the item and then edit for the details. The list of calendars is not very helpful as everything is under iCloud, both mine and the boss's, with no indication as to which belongs to whom. The shared icon being visible is a clue but not that much help. A subgroup automatically created by AppleID or the ability to create an iCloud group would be very useful.
Work arounds:
Leaving the inspector open helps eliminate 1 click so now I don't have to click on edit to reveal which calendar and entry belongs to.
To make the calendar list more manageable, I manually reordered the calendars and renamed each one of my boss's calendars with their name on it.
Tips for those that have to deal with supporting someone who deletes entries without telling you:
I maintain a travel calendar for the boss and put the details of their trip (such as hotel information) into the entry but as their travel decisions are erratic, they often delete these entries when they decide not to travel for work then later notify me to cancel the hotel but the information is lost since they deleted the entry. Frustrating. I could keep a copy elsewhere, such as email, text file, etc, but I prefer the organization of a calendar. I created a duplicate calendar on my end that they do not have access to where I copy and paste each entry of their calendar into mine. This way, when they delete an entry in their calendar, I still have the trip info. I'm curious for those that deal with this sort of thing, is this the best practice? For example, is there a way to auto duplicate or create multiple entries without copy and paste? (For now, iCal does not appear to let you put the same event on multiple calendars.)
Does anyone have any other tips for organizing multiple calendars, especially in this sort of situation where you are dealing with the calendars of others? I would really like the month view or week view to be more understandable. The color coding just isn't enough. Is there a way to put the title of the calendar to appear in the entry for week/month view?

Answer 1

I just transfered all of my data over to iCloud today.  I run a summer college program and I had all of my calendars neatly ordered on my computer under Calendar Groups - and color coded.  It was a bit frustrating to see that I would not be able to organize them in this way on iCloud.  I like your ideas - they were helpful.  I hope they update and improve on this for us!