Okay, thats not the same as auto-channel in the IHC binding… Simple mode in openhab auto-creates items, not channels.
Auto-channels in the IHC binding will create all channels from your Visual program.
Then stick to openhab 
You´re problem should be easy to fix…
First of all, find the version of the binding you´re using. In order to do that, you´ll need to shell into your openhab server…
If you´re using Windows, I suggest download and installing WinScp WinSCP :: Official Site :: Download
And afterwards install Putty (thats the shell/terminal). I dont recall if WinScp comes with Putty, if not, then you´ll need to download and install that as well. https://www.putty.org/
From here, these are the only two and best main utilities to use with openhab, (in my opinion)…
From within WinScp. The login appear at first. In this screen you choose New Site, and just need to enter ip of your openhab server, username and pw (pw only needed if you dont want to enter it each time) for your openhabian (server). Remember to save your settings, otherweise you´ll have to enter it each time.
This is my login screen… (Notice I dont use pre-inserted pw).
When done, and you have logged in, you´ll find putty on the Commands menu (or CTRL-P). When you start Putty from there, it will use the same server settings which you´d just setup in the first login screen. And you see a typical terminal/cmd window open promting for a password. Just enter the password for your openhabian (default it´s [openhabian]).
Like this:
When pw entered, it will look like this:
From here, your first command is to shell into Karaf consol using:
ssh -p 8101 openhab@localhost
It will promt you for the pw, which is [habopen] by default.
Enter the pw, and it should look like this:
Now, enter one last command into the consol:
bundle:list -s |grep -i ihc
And it should look like this:
Notice the result line… This is where the version of the IHC binding is showen… As you can see, the version i´m using is:
248 x Active x 80 x 2.5.0.201904021522 x org.openhab.binding.ihc
Thats it… You´re done, and we´re ready to help you futher.
There may be others an more simple ways to do it. And it may seem like a long way for a simple info. But I find this way highly usefull, specially because I use Winscp almost every day with openhab.
When you first get to this, you´ll be surprised how easy it really is. (And I havn´t even mentioned, I recommend using text files for config and items, yet 
).
