Question: How is the "contact" property used?

[davidkannan]

There is a property called "contact" which is available for about any type of object (report, schedule, etc.) and can be set to a person's email address or a group, role, contact, or distribution list to use as a contact for the entry. 

How is this property used by Cognos?  In other words, what will be sent to the specified email or DL?  And under what circumstances?  Does this property drive some behavior within the application?  Or is it something that can be leveraged for administration purposes, etc. and if so, how?

(Btw: The organization is on Cognos 10.1.1.)

Thank you -- any information on this would be much appreciated.

-David